Evolution of Chinese Dishes in Japan as Viewed through Cooking Texts:Focusing on Kyō no ryōri

Abstract

In this paper, I examine how Chinese dishes for home cooking in Japan have developed over the course of a century by analyzing the recipes and ingredients in the cooking text Kyō no ryōri (Today’s Cooking) and comparing them with Ryōri no tomo (Cook’s Companion), which were published from the early twentieth century, and a classical Chinese cuisine book, Zhongguo ming cai pu (Cookbook of China’s Famous Dishes), authorized by the PRC government. The result shows that after WWII, a few culinary experts mainly from China introduced a wide variety of Chinese delicacies to Japanese readers. From the 1980s, different recipes for some dishes, such as dumplings, fried rice, and spring rolls, began to be introduced often, and unfamiliar ingredients and seasoning, such as coriander, oyster sauce, and chili bean sauce, were frequently used. The same dishes were cooked repeatedly using various recipes containing new elements. To summarize, we can say that Chinese dishes for home cooking in Japan are on the road to being standardized through diversification.