Unique Flavor of Cát Trù Chung Cake – Winner of the Best Packaging and Cooking Contest at the Hùng Kings’ Festival

Phú Thọ is renowned for its many famous Chung cake villages in the region, where Chung and Giầy cakes are closely associated with the legend of Lang Liêu offering a fragrant cake to King Hùng. Chung Cake – gathering the essence of the earth and sky, is where a whole stretch of history is encapsulated. One can consider Chung cake as a culinary heritage that has been passed down through generations. The cake, evolving through time, has become vibrant and especially unique through the skilled hands of artisans in the sacred land of Phú Thọ.

In Cát Trù commune, Cẩm Khê district, Phú Thọ province, there is a well-known Chung cake crafting village. The art of making Chung cakes in Cát Trù has a long history. So long that even the locals engaged in this craft cannot recall when it started, only knowing that, in the past, Cát Trù Chung cakes were present in various local markets and were favored by everyone.


Cát Trù is favored by the Red River, gifting it with a stretch of fertile alluvial land. The vegetation here is naturally lush with numerous banana orchards, and vast stretches of dong leaves, extending endlessly.

Today, the number of households in Cát Trù maintaining the tradition of making Chung cakes is dwindling. However, the few that remain are enough to preserve the name of Cát Trù Chung Cake. Perhaps the most famous in the commune, district, and province is the family of artisan Nguyễn Thị Ảnh, located in the 3rd quarter, representing the third generation in the craft.


Using basic ingredients such as glutinous rice, green beans, pork, and dong leaves, like many other places, Cát Trù Chung Cake stands out in the preparation of ingredients and the wrapping technique. The glutinous rice used for wrapping the cake must be the best Thai Binh glutinous rice. Local green beans should be small but uniform, without pests. The pork filling must be fresh and delicious, with a moderate amount of fat seasoned with pepper. Especially the dong leaves, neither too young nor too old, to maintain the color of the cake.


The people of Cát Trù never use a mold for wrapping the cake but still manage to create perfectly square and uniform cakes. They layer two leaves, fill them with ingredients, and pass them from hand to hand during the wrapping process. The cakes are not cooked with charcoal but traditional dry wood because, according to experience, only with wood can the fire be slow, and the cake be cooked thoroughly and fragrantly. The cakes are boiled for 5 – 7 hours and then removed from the fire to soak in a pot for a while before being taken out.


The finished Cát Trù Chung Cake, made by artisan Nguyễn Thị Ảnh, is beautifully crafted, with square and tall shapes, vibrant colors, fragrant rice, and a rich and distinctive flavor. In addition to the traditional green bean and pork-filled Chung Cake, the Nguyễn Thị Ảnh family also researched and created various vegetarian Chung Cake varieties to serve different preferences, such as Red Bean Chung Cake, Mango Chung Cake, made from natural ingredients: water spinach, red beans, adzuki beans, mung beans, seaweed, mushroom seasoning, pepper, vegetable oil, etc.


Cát Trù Chung Cake has won the First Prize six times at the Chung and Giầy Cake Wrapping and Cooking Contest at the Hùng Kings’ Festival in Đền Hùng (2013, 2014, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019), along with many other awards. These achievements speak to the perfection brought by the artisans in creating delicious and unique Chung Cakes.

Cát Trù Chung Cake is highly sought after and is often picked up or delivered overnight to meet the demand of markets, supermarkets within and outside the province. For decades, the Cát Trù Chung Cake has followed many people to various distant roads, supplying large markets such as Hanoi, Vĩnh Phúc, Quảng Ninh, Hải Phòng, some districts in the province, and has been chosen several times as a gift to send to Vietnamese compatriots living and working in Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Taiwan, and other places.

Travelers visiting the Ancestral Land, take a moment to visit the land of Cát Trù, Cẩm Khê, and enjoy the unique flavor of Chung Cake with the distinctive method of the locals here. The land of Phú Thọ is fragrant with hospitality, and the Cát Trù Chung Cake is a simple gift carrying the rustic soul of the people of the Ancestral Land, dedicated to travelers from afar with each visit.