Tangpyeongchae

Tangpyeongchae is a salad of cheongpo-muk — clear jelly made from mung bean starch — mixed with stir-fried beef, blanched mung bean sprouts and water dropwort (minari), and topped with shredded egg and roasted laver. Its name is usually traced to King Yeongjo (r. 1724–1776), who tried to end the ruinous feuding between court factions with a policy of impartial appointments called tangpyeong, a term drawn from a line in the Chinese Book of Documents describing the king's way as broad and level, favoring no party. The Encyclopedia of Korean Culture states that the dish was first served at a gathering held to discuss that policy, and a popular reading matches its colored ingredients to the four rival factions.

The written record is more complicated. In the late eighteenth century, Yu Deuk-gong's Gyeongdo japji, a record of Seoul customs, describes tangpyeongchae as mung bean jelly with shredded pork and minari shoots in a vinegared soy sauce, good on a cool spring evening; the mid-nineteenth-century Dongguk sesigi repeats this under the third lunar month and adds laver. Neither mentions politics. The first story connecting the two is in Jo Jae-sam's Songnam japji (1855), which says that Song In-myeong — later a leading tangpyeong minister under Yeongjo — heard the dish being hawked in a market as a young man and took from it the idea of mixing the four factions in government.

Food historian Joo Young-ha of the Academy of Korean Studies has pointed out that no record shows Yeongjo or his successor Jeongjo ordering the dish to be eaten, that the earliest description contains only three ingredients rather than four faction colors, and that if Songnam japji is right, the dish was already sold in Seoul before the policy borrowed its spirit. He suggests the name may simply describe an even mixture of many ingredients. Whatever its origin, the political reading has stuck, and the dish is often served today as a gesture of harmony. Late-nineteenth-century cookbooks such as Siuijeonseo record it as tanpyeongchae, and it was a seasonal food for samjinnal, the third day of the third lunar month.

• A balanced plate in one dish: starch from the jelly, protein from beef and egg, and fresh vegetables from sprouts and minari make this more complete than most banchan.
• Light and refreshing: the vinegar dressing made it a favored spring dish; early sources describe it as cool and pleasant on spring evenings.
• Nutrients from beef and egg: a modest amount of meat and egg supplies vitamin B12 and zinc.

• Pork or beef: the earliest records use pork; later recipes and modern versions mostly use beef.
• Mustard dressing: the 1896 cookbook Gyugon yoram dresses the dish with vinegar and cold mustard, scattering pine-nut powder and chili powder over the top, while Siuijeonseo uses soy sauce, sesame oil and vinegar.
• Seafood version: the 1924 Joseon mussang sinsik yori jebeop calls it muk-cheongpo, stresses plenty of vinegar and suggests adding briefly blanched razor-clam or other clam meat.
• Five colors: modern presentations emphasize the five traditional colors — white jelly and sprouts, green minari, red beef, black laver and yellow egg.