History of Natto and Its Relatives (1405-2012 - SoyInfo Center

Journal of the Korean Society of Food and Nutrition
13(3):275-84. [Kor]*
1062. Brennan, Jennifer. 1984. The cuisines of Asia: nine
great oriental cuisines by technique. New York, NY: St.
Martin’s Press. ix + 542 p. Illust. (line drawings). Index. 24
cm.
• Summary: The “Nine great Oriental cuisines” are those
of “China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, The
Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam” (as stated on the book’s
cover). The book contains many recipes, yet it is largely
organized into chapters by cooking techniques: barbecuing,
steaming, stir-frying / using a wok, deep-frying, etc.
The chapter on “Japan” discusses soybeans, miso, tofu,
and shoyu on pages 44-45. Soyfoods are said to be the 2nd
largest source of protein in the Japanese diet.
The section on “Soybeans” (p. 97-104) includes a
discussion of the names of various soyfoods in different
Asian languages and countries. For example: “The basic
bean curd is called tau-fu in Cantonese, tau-hu in Hokkien,
and tofu in Japanese.” Or consider this (p. 99): “During the
basic process of making bean curd, at the stage where the
© Copyright Soyinfo Center 2012
HISTORY OF NATTO AND ITS RELATIVES 340
bean and water mixture is boiled, a skin or residue forms
on the top. This skin [yuba] is skimmed off and dried. It is
commercially available in sheets... and in the form of sticks
that bear the picturesque name of ‘second bamboo’ [dried
yuba sticks] in Chinese, meaning that they are the second
residue from the curd.”
There follows a 3-page table titled “Soybean products”
(p. 101-03) which has four columns: Description, Chinese
name [Cantonese], Japanese name, comments.
Note: Before proceeding, we believe that that the design
of this table is fundamentally fl awed. (1) Why are the names
of the basic soyfoods not given in the other languages with
which this book is concerned, including Mandarin Chinese,
Korean, Indonesian, Vietnamese, Filipino, etc.? (3) Why
is no English name given for each basic soyfood product?
Sometimes the description is the English name, yet that name
is rarely the name a person would use if they were selling
the product in an English-speaking country. (3) Why are so
many common “soybean products” omitted from this table,
such as the various basic other types of Japanese miso and of
Japanese shoyu (besides koikuchi shoyu), fermented black
soybeans (douchi, dow see), soymilk, soy sprouts, roasted