Washoku, the Fermented Cuisine

the current — the mouth

Chapter Six — Sa-Shi-Su-Se-So: The Kitchen's Flavour Is Mostly Fermented

第六章 — さしすせそ・台所の味は、ほとんどが発酵である

Introduction — Descending into the Kitchen

Thus far, the watercourse has flowed through distant places. The Zen temple kitchen, the keeping foods of sea and lake, an old storehouse, and a twentieth-century laboratory. But where washoku's fermentation truly lives is in a place far nearer at hand. The everyday kitchen.

Let us, at last, descend into that kitchen. As the foundation of household seasoning, there is a word everyone has heard at least once: sa-shi-su-se-so. Trace the true nature of these five seasonings, and washoku's backbone — fermentation — comes into view, lying quietly at the bottom of the everyday table, not within some special dish.

I. Sa-Shi-Su-Se-So — Five Seasonings, and Their Order

"Sa-shi-su-se-so" is a mnemonic that lines up the first sounds of the five basic seasonings of washoku: sugar (sa), salt (shi), vinegar (su), soy sauce (se = seuyu), miso (so).1 And it shows, at the same time, the order in which they are added to a dish.1

Why this order? One reason lies in the size of the molecule. Sugar has a large molecule and is slow to soak into an ingredient — so it goes in first. Salt has a small molecule and soaks fast — so, after.1 And vinegar, soy sauce and miso are best added late, for their aroma and savour fly off when heated.1 In these words "the savour flies off" lies a clue. For an aroma so delicate that it flies is precisely an aroma born of fermentation.

II. Fermentation Is Three of the Five — Su, Se, So

Here, let us divide the five seasonings into two, by their nature.

Sugar and salt — sa and shi — are not fermentation. Sugar bears sweetness, salt bears saltiness — the ground, as it were, of flavour. These have not passed through the microbe's hand. The three that lend depth and lingering resonance, on the other hand — vinegar, soy sauce, miso, that is su, se, so — are all fermented seasonings.2 The very reason they are added late, their savour weakening with heat, is because these three are the products of the microbe's work.2

So, of the most basic implements of the kitchen, the part that runs the core of flavour is, for the most part, upheld by fermentation. What was said in the prologue takes concrete form here. Every day, unknowing, we finish our dishes with a flavour the microbe has made.

III. Vinegar — A Fermentation of the Fermentation

Among these, vinegar has a particularly intriguing pedigree.

Rice vinegar is made thus. First, kōji is added to steamed rice to bring forth sugar, which is then alcohol-fermented. That is, sake is made, for the moment. And then that sake is fermented further by the power of acetic-acid bacteria. What comes of this is vinegar.3 Vinegar is sake fermented once again — a fermentation of the fermentation, as it were. Indeed, vinegar is held to have come to Japan in the Kofun period, together with the craft of sake-making.4

Here, recall the sushi of Chapter Four. The sourness of sushi, made by months of lactic fermentation, the people of Edo had vinegar take over. There, I wrote that this vinegar, too, is a product of fermentation. Now the meaning grows plain. They had been replacing the sourness of one fermentation with the sourness of another. The sourness of sushi, changing form, remained within fermentation all along.

IV. Soy Sauce and Miso, and Mirin — Toward the Basin

The remaining two, se and so — soy sauce and miso. That their root lies in the hishio traced in Chapter One, we have already seen. They are descendants of that old lineage, the soybean fermented by the power of kōji mould.5

Miso divides, by the kōji used, into rice miso, barley miso, and bean miso. Of these, bean miso takes Aichi, Mie and Gifu — the Chūkyō region — as its chief home.5 And, though it is not counted among "sa-shi-su-se-so," there is another fermentation of the kitchen: mirin. This seasoning, which lends a sheen and a mellow sweetness to a dish, is likewise a product of kōji and time.6

Here the watercourse joins into one. Bean miso, tamari, white soy sauce, and mirin — these fermented seasonings that uphold the washoku kitchen had gathered, precisely, in the soil of Mikawa — of Hekinan. It is the very figure of that land, traced in the second paper, The Basin. The watercourse, looked up to from the kitchen of the mouth, is here joined clearly to the basin.

Closing — Each Day, We Scoop Up Time

Three of the five of sa-shi-su-se-so. And mirin, and cooking sake too. The fermentation of the kitchen does not stand out. Bottled, lined up on the shelf, used as a matter of course, every day.

Yet within a single bowl of miso soup, a single dish of simmered food, we scoop up, by the spoonful, months — sometimes years — of fermented time. Washoku is not only within the cuisine of special days, the food of the feast. It is upheld, quietly, by microbe and time, at the bottom of the most ordinary everyday table. The watercourse on the plate had shown its face here, in the nearest place of all.

The watercourse is about to come out to the sea. In the next, closing chapter, we turn toward the year 2013 — the day the world acknowledged this cuisine of microbes as a heritage of humankind.

Sources

This text is the sixth chapter of a white paper on washoku. The facts set down rest on the cited sources. Of "sa-shi-su-se-so," what is of fermentation are vinegar, soy sauce and miso (and mirin); sugar and salt are not fermentation — a distinction drawn plainly here, as in the prologue. The order of adding seasonings is a general guide, varying with the dish. This chapter treats seasonings from the cultural and historical side, and does not enter into health effects.

Footnotes

  1. "Sa-Shi-Su-Se-So (Seasonings)," Wikipedia (on sa-shi-su-se-so being a mnemonic for the five seasonings — sugar, salt, vinegar, soy sauce [seuyu], miso — and their order of use; on sugar's molecular weight [342] being about six times salt's [58.2], so it goes in first for slow penetration; and on the acetic acid of vinegar evaporating with heat and soy sauce and miso being best added late for their aroma). https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%81%95%E3%81%97%E3%81%99%E3%81%9B%E3%81%9D_(%E8%AA%BF%E5%91%B3%E6%96%99) ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  2. "Level Up with the Seasoning 'Sa-Shi-Su-Se-So'," Washoku no Umami (Kobayashi Foods) (on su, se, so — vinegar, soy sauce, miso — being fermented seasonings, often added in the latter part of cooking because heat weakens the distinctive flavour of fermentation). https://www.kobayashi-foods.co.jp/washoku-no-umami/seasoning%E3%80%80sa-shi-su-se-so ↩ ↩2

  3. "What Are the Basic Seasonings 'Sa-Shi-Su-Se-So'?" Kawashima-ya (on rice vinegar being made by adding kōji to steamed rice to saccharify it, alcohol-fermenting it, then carrying out acetic fermentation and maturing it, and on brewed vinegar being the acetic fermentation of a grain or fruit "sake"). https://kawashima-ya.jp/contents/?p=795 ↩

  4. "On the Seasoning 'Sa-Shi-Su-Se-So'," Bishoku Techō (on vinegar being held to have come to Japan in the Kofun period with the technology of sake production). https://www.bannobiyori.com/media/archives/1213 / "The Correct Order of 'Sa-Shi-Su-Se-So'?" Kyoto Culinary Art College (on vinegar having acetic acid as its chief component, becoming a sour seasoning by fermenting and maturing fruit or grain). https://www.kyoto-chorishi.ac.jp/knowledge/c0024/ ↩

  5. "What Is the Seasoning 'Sa-Shi-Su-Se-So'?" sharedine (on the root of soy sauce and miso lying in the Chinese hishio; on soy sauce being soybean, wheat and salt fermented by kōji mould; and on miso dividing, by the kōji used, into rice, barley and bean miso, bean miso taking the Chūkyō region of Aichi, Mie and Gifu as its chief home). https://sharedine.me/media/know-how/condiment-sashisuseso ↩ ↩2

  6. "What Is the Basic 'Sa-Shi-Su-Se-So'?" SATETO (on cooking sake and hon-mirin being added earlier than sugar, while "mirin-style seasoning," not being sake, is added after miso and soy sauce). https://coop-sateto.jp/special/basic_spice/ / "Level Up with the Seasoning 'Sa-Shi-Su-Se-So'," Washoku no Umami (on the timing of adding mirin). https://www.kobayashi-foods.co.jp/washoku-no-umami/seasoning%E3%80%80sa-shi-su-se-so ↩