"Compatibility" is a professional parlance of traditional Chinese medicine, which means how medicines are compatible to treat a certain kind of diseases with no taboos.

The meat consumed by mankind are in two categories: one is white meat (chicken, duck, goose and fish, etc ), the other is red meat (horse, sheep, ox and pig, etc ) . From the perspective of nutrition, white meat is better that red meat. From the economic standpoint, red meat is better than  white meat. Among the red meat, the horsemeat has the highest nutritional values. But it is hot in nature and easily spoils. So among the red meat, people choose beef which is the second best to horsemeat as the meaty meal. It is high in proteins and low in fat. Especially in Europe, people take beef as the main entree. No wonder that Khrushchev said that "Beef baked with potato is communism". Both beef and the soya bean contain high proteins. Guilin spice noodles have beef and fired soybeans, and it can be said that its recipe compatibility is very scientific.

In processing the rice into rice noodles, much of the nutrition is lost while the soybean milk contains eight kinds of amino acids needed by human body. It supplements the lost nutrition in processing rice noodles. So rice noodles + soybean = flavor + nutrition. It is a prefect pair. 

The compatibility in eating Guilin rice noodles is also very particular. For example,   When you eat Fresh Pork Rice Noodles, you must add shallot and go with fried dough-stick. When you eat Beef Rice Noodles, you must add coriander and go with flapjack. When you eat Three¨CFresh Rice Noodles you must eat with lettuce£»When you eat Horsemeat Rice Noodles, you must add pepper fried in oil, and fried peanuts (use heat to attack heat). These methods are very demanding and can¡¯t be broken.
 
The so-called ¡°spices¡± used in stewing the brine, actually are all Chinese herbal medicines to treat unaccustomization to the climate of a different place. According to legend, When Zhuge Liang crossed the Lu River to fight a battle with Meng Huo, His Shu army were also not accustomed to the local climate. They also used this ¡°brine¡± ( unfettered soup ) to catch Meng Huo for seven times and fulfilled the strategic goal of consolidating the rear area. It is a regret that, in order to make the story more interesting, when the author Luo Guanzhong wrote the ¡°Romance of Three Kingdoms¡±, he changed the story of unaccustomed Shu soldiers to that they drank the dumb spring and all became dumb. And later Meng Huo offered the anecdote ¡°unfettered soup¡± and the Shu army were thus saved. (See the Unofficial Story of Three Kingdoms )

If you talk about the Chinese cuisine with a Japanese people and mentioned the brines of Guilin rice noodles, he may not know it. But if you talk about the ¡°unfettered soup¡±, he would understand it immediately. Legend has it that when monk Jian Zhen crossed sea to reach Japan,  he mentioned the unfettered soup in his preaching. Japanese believes in Buddhism, they remember to heart what a hierarch said.

Strictly speaking, the ¡°medicines¡± used must be of a certain dosage. But some shops who do not know the traditional brine stewing method, give a random amount of "spices". This is unscientific. Let¡¯s take aniseed as an example, though you have counted the number, but some have seeds, while some not, their weights are definitely different. Amomum tsaoko and licorice are also the same, some are large and some are small£»some are thick and some are thin., their weights are definitely different. The brine stewed is difficult to remain as a same level. So it would be better to take the ingredients weighing with a small steelyard.