China has a long history of eating flowers,and this tradition has been handed down to the present day through the centuries. The main study on flower-eating culture was presented in Chinese classical works describing medicinal values of plants. Another closely related subject is ethnobotany. Since the 1990s, several field works have been conducted in the Yunnan province, which have already generated several reports on the subject. Most classical works are mainly concerned with the types of flowers and their medicinal values. Because of this, the author examined several classical cook books from Song to Qing Dynasty and focused primarily on the methods of preparation of flowers for eating purposes.

Flowers were used for health beverage in Song and Yuan Dynasties. In Ming Dynasty, the usage has been expanded to cooking. In Qing Dynasty, flowers were used as seasoning ingredients to add special flavor to dessert.