Use of Vinegar in Japanese Cuisine during the Edo Period

Abstract

We studied the use of vinegar in cooking in the Edo period, through the details of vinegar dishes extracted from 33 cookbooks of that period. A total of 1,371 varieties of vinegars were used throughout the Edo period, which was slightly more than the types of soy sauce used. However, cookbooks from the early Edo period mention vinegar 1.5 times more often than soy sauce. Therefore, we speculate that vinegar was the most commonly used seasoning before soy sauce became popular. The most frequently described vinegar dish in these cookbooks was "fish namasu", which accounted for 43.9% of all the vinegar dishes. There were 122 types of vinegar mixed with spices, foods, or seasonings, of which 61 types were vinegar-mixed miso, to which spices or foods were added. The Edo cookbooks mention several cooking methods with heat, using vinegar termed "suiri". This was primarily used for dishes prepared by simmering. Two types of simmering were described, viz., simmering after adding vinegar, and adding vinegar after simmering in suiri. Other cooking methods, such as heating with a small amount of vinegar, and pouring hot vinegar onto raw fish, were also described. Use of vinegar for cooking with heat, appears to be popular during the Edo period, which is not very common in modern Japanese cuisine.