Curated playlist
Japanese cuisine
- TeaIn 2016, archaeologists found the earliest known physical evidence of tea in an emperor's tomb in Xi'an.
- SoybeanThe soybean, known to botanists as Glycine max, is a legume native to East Asia, and in June 1973 the United States briefly refused to sell it abroad. Traders had misread the soybean futures market, which wrongly signaled a major shortage.…
- SushiThe word sushi traces to an old term meaning sour tasting, not raw fish. Fermentation gave the dish its original tang.
- Glutinous riceGlutinous rice sits behind a statistic that sounds almost invented. In Laos, a landlocked country of roughly 7 million people, each person eats about 171 kilograms of it every year. That is 377 pounds, and it is the highest per-capita…
- Japanese cuisineIn 1872, Japan's new ruler served a European feast that let ordinary people eat meat in public.
- OkonomiyakiOkonomiyaki is a Japanese savory pancake, and its name doubles as an instruction. Okonomi means "how you like" or "what you like", and yaki means grilled. Together the two words promise a dish cooked to the eater's own taste. That promise…
- Blood sausageBlood sausage is a sausage filled with blood that has been cooked or dried, then mixed with a filler until the mass sets firm as it cools. Pigs supply the blood most often. Sheep, lambs, cattle, chickens and geese serve too. The idea shows…
- CurryCurry was a category the British invented, not a dish India named. Indians used specific names for their dishes.
- TofuTofu, the pale block of pressed soy curds, was traditionally laid out at graves in China for a curious reason. Legend held that ghosts had lost their chins and jaws, which left tofu as the only food soft enough for them to manage. Before…
- CalabashA calabash gourd grown in Taylorsville, Kentucky, in 2001 weighed 111.5 kilograms. That single fruit hints at the range of Lagenaria siceraria, the vine known as the calabash or the bottle gourd. Its fruits can be huge and round, small and…
- WagyuWagyu cattle share a startling family secret. Researchers once traced the pedigrees of 718,969 registered Japanese Black mothers. Of those, 718,330 descended from a single bull called Tajiri-go. That is 99.9 percent. Wagyu is the name for…
- PirozhkiJapan's curry bread is said to have been inspired by pirozhki. Russian refugees brought the pastry there in 1917.
- Horse meatHorse meat is a staple of kitchens in many parts of Europe and Asia, and a forbidden food in many others. The eight countries that eat the most of it consume the meat of about 4.3 million horses every year. That is an enormous number for a…
- French toastFrench toast is bread soaked in beaten eggs, often with milk or cream, and then fried in a pan. It is also known as eggy bread and as poor knights of Windsor. A dish with that many aliases invites suspicion. Is it really French? Who first…