[Sca-cooks] Concerning Ryori Monogatari

[Alec Story]

Interesting about soy sauce.

The conclusion that H. T. Huang draws in *Science and Civilisation in China*,
volume 6 part V: Fermentations and food science is that, in China, soy
sauce was certainly known by the time of Qimin yaoshu (544), but that it
was not as popular as it is today, with fermented meat and fish sauces
being preferred.  Over time, soy sauce became more popular in the north of
China, with the situation today being that fish sauces are an almost
exclusively south-China and Vietnam thing.

A copy is available online at
https://monoskop.org/images/f/f1/Needham_Joseph_Science_and_Civilisation_in_China_Vol_6-5_Biology_and_Biological_Technology_Fermentations_and_Food_Science.pdf
if anyone is interested.  It's a wonderful book.

Page 374 discusses soy sauce in Japan and China [I've updated the Chinese
romanizations to pinyin, since the author uses the dated Wade-Giles system]:

"It is believed that long before active cultural interchange between China
and Japan began, the Japanese had independently developed savoury sauces by
pickling salted fish, shellfish and meat.  These condiments were called
*hishio*.  When the Japanese adapted the Chinese writing system to their
language, *hisio* was written with as *jiang* 醬. [...]  During the Nara
Period (+710-794), different types of *hishio* began to appear in the
litearture, some derived from grains and soybeans [...].  What is
remarkable is that *jiang* was apparently obtained in liquid form,
suggesting that it was a primitive protoype of soy sauce.  These references
further suggest that the methods for making *jiang* and *chi* [solid
fermented soy beans], as recoreded in the Qimin Yaoshu +544, had been
transmitted to Japan and were being applied by the Japanese to prepare
similar types of fermented soyfoods from locally available raw materials.

Tradition has it that the earliest *miso*, i.e. a *hisio* made with
soybeans was prepared by exposing cooked soybean cakes to wild fungal
spores and fermenting the moulded beans in brine, thus tracing its
genealogy back to the *chi* (rather than the *jiang*) of Han China.

...

During the Kamakura Period (+1184 to +1333) *miso* became a staple in the
Japanese diet.

...

Legend has it that the earliest type of Japanese soy sauce, *tamari,* was
discovered in Yuasa in the 13th century as a dark fragrant liquid left at
the bottom of the jar in a Kinzanji *miso* operation.

...

This story of the origin of *tamari* is reminiscent of the way a liquid soy
condiment was left at the bottom of the fermentation jar in the *chi* process
described in the late Tang Dynasty almanac, the Si Chi Zuan Yao.

...

The earliest reference to *shoyu* [the typical soy sauce of Japan] occurs
in the *Ekirinhon Setsuyoshu* a Japanese dictionary of +1597.  The
procedure for making *shoyu* may have been transmitted from China in the
preceding century.  As a result, the Japanese process for making *shoyu* is
practically the same as the Chinese process for making the *jiang* type of
*jiangyou*."

On Sat, Mar 4, 2017 at 1:43 PM, Solveig Throndardottir <nostrand at acm.org>
wrote:

> Noble Cousins!
>
> Greetings from Sólveig! There is a 19th century monograph on sakè
> production which was originally published by Tokyo University. I believe
> that it is still available online. Japan uses a very specific species
> aspergillus oryzae which is traditionally cultured on mochi. Mochi is made
> by steaming a specific cultivar of oryzae japponica which is known as mochi
> gome in Japan and is marketed as either “glutinous rice” or “sweet rice” in
> North America. Traditionally, the steamed rice is then placed in a large
> wooden mortar and beaten with a large wooden mallet until it is a paste.
> The paste would then be formed into disks called kagame mochi. Kagame is
> the Japanese word for mirror and the name derives from their shape. These
> disks can then be either eaten as is or used in a variety of other ways.
> Regardless, in Japan a very specific mold is cultivated and used for sakè
> production, miso production, &c. Shoyu (soy sauce) does date to period in
> Japan, but appears to have still been a fairly recent arrival ca. 1600.
> There are a number of earlier fermented sauces.
>
> Your Humble Servant
> Sólveig Þróndardóttir
> Amateur Scholar
>
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>



-- 
Alec Story