XO Sauce (XO醬): How a 1980s Peninsula Hong Kong Chef Invented Cantonese Cuisine's Most Luxurious Condiment

In 1986, in the Cantonese fine-dining kitchen of Spring Moon at The Peninsula Hong Kong in Tsim Sha Tsui, a chef made a decision that changed Guangdong cooking forever. He wanted a complimentary chilli condiment good enough to serve to the hotel's guests, who included Hong Kong's wealthiest families and every visiting head of state. What he created was so distinctive that customers began asking to buy it by the jar. By 1987, Spring Moon was bottling it. Today, it sits on the tables of nearly every serious Cantonese kitchen in the world.

The chef is not officially named in most tellings. The sauce he created has a name that has become one of the most famous in Cantonese cuisine: XO醬.

Why It Is Called XO

The "XO" is borrowed straight from the Cognac trade, where the letters mean "extra old" and mark the finest brandies on the shelf. In 1980s Hong Kong, XO was cultural shorthand for luxury — what people gave as wedding gifts, what wealthy men ordered to close deals, what businessmen carried onto Cathay Pacific flights to the mainland. Naming a chilli sauce "XO" was a deliberate wink: this is the best of the best.

There is no actual Cognac in it.

What Is Actually Inside

XO sauce is not one thing — it is a Cantonese luxury pantry, blitzed and slow-cooked into a spoonable condiment. The classic recipe centres on three prized dried seafood ingredients that Guangdong home cooks would have considered banquet-only:

• Conpoy (乾干貝), the dried scallop that gives XO sauce its signature savoury depth. Good conpoy from Japan or Hong Kong itself can cost more than beef.

• Dried shrimp (蝦米), which delivers the burst of intense concentrated umami.

• Jinhua ham (金華火腿) from Zhejiang — the Chinese equivalent of prosciutto, aged and salty.

These three are then combined with garlic, shallots, chilli, and rendered pork or shrimp oil, slow-cooked until the flavours marry. The result is not a chilli sauce so much as a savoury bomb — spicy, salty, sweet from the shallots, funky from the dried seafood, and rich enough to change any dish it touches. It is also similar in structure to Fujian's older sha cha sauce, but with the seafood dialled up and the herbs stripped back.

How XO Sauce Went From Hotel Freebie to Global Cult

In the late 1980s, once Spring Moon started bottling it, XO sauce spread fast. Every high-end Cantonese restaurant in Hong Kong had to make its own version. Then the Michelin-starred kitchens of Guangzhou followed, then the Cantonese diaspora restaurants in Vancouver, London, Sydney, San Francisco. By the early 2000s, XO sauce had crossed over: you could find it in supermarkets across mainland China, in Chinatowns worldwide, and eventually on the shelves of Whole Foods.

Today it is used to fry rice, to stir into noodles, to spoon over steamed chicken or fish, to dip har gow, to dress carpaccio in fusion restaurants, and — in a very Hong Kong move — to eat straight off a spoon while cooking dinner. Every family has a favourite brand. Every serious Cantonese cook has an opinion on which one is closest to the original.

Why Real XO Sauce Is Getting More Expensive Every Year

The dried seafood that gives XO its identity is not getting cheaper. Wild-caught conpoy prices have climbed sharply over the past decade, and premium Jinhua ham is now scarce enough that some producers substitute cheaper cured meats. That means many bottled XO sauces sold today are shadows of the 1986 original — heavier on chilli, lighter on the scallop that made it iconic in the first place.

A truly good jar of XO sauce is still expensive in Hong Kong, precisely because the ingredients still are. In a Cantonese household, opening a fresh jar of high-grade XO is a small ceremony — you scoop with a clean spoon, you seal it tight, and you make it last.

How to Cook With It

XO sauce is a finishing condiment, not a base. The trick is not to cook it too hard: it is already fully cooked. Cantonese chefs use it three ways — stirred into rice or noodles at the last minute, spooned raw onto steamed fish or seafood, or briefly heated in oil to bloom the aromatics before tossing in vegetables like Chinese broccoli. Add too early and you burn the delicate dried seafood. Add too late and the flavour never marries. The window is small; that is why it is a chef's condiment.

The Cantonese Word for It

A Very Cantonese Invention

XO sauce is a perfect Cantonese story. A chef takes the most expensive, most traditional Guangdong ingredients — conpoy, dried shrimp, Jinhua ham — and combines them the way a jazz musician builds a solo, then names the result after the fanciest liquor of the era. It is heritage-honouring and status-conscious at the same time. It uses ingredients your grandmother would recognise, in a form your grandmother never invented, sold in a bottle with a label she would have laughed at.

Which is exactly why it works. And why, forty years later, XO sauce is still the Cantonese condiment the rest of the world reaches for when it wants to cook like Hong Kong. For more on the broader tradition, see our guide to Yuet Choi (Cantonese cuisine).

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