During the
Joseon period (1392–1897), people enjoyed the numerous chicken soup dishes that were similar to
samgye-tang, including
yeongye-tang,
chonggye-tang, and
hwanggye-tang. While it was the custom to make a soup with young chicken and serve it to elders during the summer days, the chicken boiled with
milkvetch roots and its broth were served to the sick queen during
King Injo's reign. However, the description of the dish that most closely resembles today's form of
samgye-tang can be found in
Joseon yorijaebeop (), the cookbook. Bang Sin-yeong, a professor of
Ewha Womans University, wrote in 1917 to compile the information on how to make various traditional dishes of Joseon. In the book, it is described that
dakguk (), or chicken soup, is made by gutting a chicken and stuffing the inside with three spoons of glutinous rice and one spoon of ginseng powder, followed by tying up the opening and boiling the chicken with ten bowls of water. The dish began to be commercially sold at restaurants around 1940s and under the name
gyesam-tang () in 1950s, which meant chicken ginseng soup. Thus, since 1960s, it became more common to stuff the chicken with a whole piece of ginseng instead of powder, reaching today's form of the dish. To emphasize the medicinal effects of the ginseng in the soup, many people since then have started calling the dish
samgye-tang (ginseng chicken soup) instead of
gyesam-tang (chicken ginseng soup). == Custom ==