Yue Cuisine made its debut in Canton . It is characterized firstly by its wide and strict selection of ingredients . Seafood and game food are the first-rate courses . Besides chicken , duck and goose , pigeon , partridge and quail also make delectable dishes . For seafood , the Cantonese take to garoupa, pomfret , hairtail , conger eel , turtle, prawn , and crab . Their favorite game foods include reptiles and amphibians : terrapin , pangolin , tortoise and snake . Yue Cuisine holds fastidious norms in selecting ingredients . For instance , for white cut chicken , they require Qiangyuan (county) chicken and Wenchang (county) chicken . For other dishes , they select mouse-speckled garoupa , silver pomfret , off-shore prawn , gold-stained tortoise and blackmane goose as superior ingredients .
Secondly , Guangdong people favor light , delicious , refreshing and slippery tastes . Their cooking methods are mostly steaming , saute and stir-frying with thick gravy . Due to the long duration of summer , they favor light and refreshing foods and aquatic food . They like to taste the original flavor of sea foods and fresh foods . Only in winter do they eat fatty foods and strongly flavored foods , such as dog’s meat , stewed pork chunks , fried oyster , braised eel , pig’s knuckle , etc .

The third characteristic of Guangdong cuisine is plenty of supportive vegetable , due to the substantial scope of local produce . In the north of Guangdong are grown plenty of mushrooms and bamboo shoots . With the favorable climate , the province abounds also in rich varieties of fruits , such as pineapple , litchi , plum , cocoa nut , banana , Chinese chestnut , etc . All these can make hygienic dishes .

“five or four-star” hotels) prepare a stock of base porridge ( called “taste porridge”) with ingredients of hens , pig’s bones , dried scallops and soybean rolls . When a customer asks for a certain kind of porridge , the cook adds to the base porridge some other suitable , ready-made ingredients such as fish , shrimp , crab , frog , meat ball , pig’s giblets , beef chicken , duckling , etc ., as well as ginger , Chinese onion and pepper powder . Located at the junction of international exchanges , Guangzhou has amalgamated both the overseas and domestic merits in preparing refreshments . Every teahouse or hotel provides hundred of cakes and refreshments .