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Alternative names | Tortoise Jelly, Turtle Jelly |
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Type | Pudding |
Course | Dessert |
Place of origin | China |
Main ingredients | Plastron, Chinese herbs |
Guilinggao | |||||||||||
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Traditional Chinese | 龜苓膏 | ||||||||||
Simplified Chinese | 龟苓膏 | ||||||||||
Literal meaning | turtle and Smilax glabra jelly | ||||||||||
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Guilinggao (Chinese: 龜苓膏; pinyin: Guīlínggāo), also known as tortoise jelly (though not technically correct) or turtle powder, is a jelly-like Chinese medicine, also sold as a dessert. It was traditionally made from the gao, or paste of the plastron (bottom shell) from the turtle Cuora trifasciata (commonly known as "three-lined box turtle", or "golden coin turtle", 金錢龜)[1] and a variety of herbal products, in particular, China roots Smilax glabra (土伏苓, Tu fu ling).[2][3] Although the critically endangered golden coin turtle (Cuora trifasciata) is commercially farmed in modern China, it is extremely expensive;[4] therefore, even when turtle-derived ingredients are used in commercially available guilinggao, they come from other, more commonly available, turtle species.[1][5]
More often, commercially available guilinggao sold as a dessert does not contain turtle shell powder. They share the same herbal additives as the medicine and are similarly marketed as being good for skin complexion when ingested.[6]
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