Gold-and-Silver Cabbage Almond Pig Lung Soup

Why people make this soup

In traditional Chinese seasonality, the brief window between “Start of Autumn” (li qiu) and “End of Heat” (chu shu) is called “fighting over autumn” — summer refuses to leave, but you can feel the faint first breath of autumn in the early mornings and evenings. During this seasonal transition, the body is especially prone to dryness and lung-related discomfort. The remedy in Cantonese kitchens is a soup called “gold and silver cabbage” — gold being the sun-dried cabbage (which, through the process of drying, becomes especially good at clearing heat and soothing cough), and silver being the fresh, white cabbage. Together with almonds and pig lung, this soup has been a seasonal go-to for generations. Traditional Chinese food therapy uses the principle of “like nourishes like” — eating lung to support the lungs.