Yoshoku (Japanese style Western Food)

[letscooking]

I'm doing some research on foreign influences on Japanese food (e.g. Japanese curry is an import of Indian curry via the British Navy, etc.) and I'm stuck on a couple of the more obscure "imported" foods. Can anyone help me to identify:

1. When cabbage rolls started becoming popular in Japan? Was there a predominant influence from a particular country's cabbage rolls at the time it was adopted (and adapted) into Japanese cuisine?

2. Where does carrot-based salad dressing come from? Is it a Japanese invention for a western food?

3. When did canned tuna become such a large part of Japanese cuisine? Was this the influence of the British Navy, or a more global shift towards canned food at this time?

 

Your suggestions are welcome!

[Deryn]

Hi and welcome to eGullet. I wish I could answer your questions but I have no idea about any of those things. The only thing I can offer is a link which you may already have investigated (and believe me there is a lot of information in the depths of this repository but it will take work to even find out if what you are asking is discussed - sorry) ... Food Timeline

[helenjp]

Do you read Japanese?

Cabbage rolls: cabbage itself is not a traditional Japanese food, and the flowering garden types are older here than the eating types. According to several sites, cabbage rolls really became popular in Japan as a part of oden. Some parts of Japan (interestingly, especially the western coast that faces Korea and Russia) include chunks of cabbage in oden. The idea of serving oden in soup is a mid to late 19thC Tokyo innovation, and the idea of serving it in a thin, clear soup is thought to have been influenced by western soups as the Meiji period got well under way. However, I have not heard specifically that cabbage rolls were a popular ingredient from that period, and I suspect that they didn't really make an impact in Japan until white Russians started arriving in Japan in large numbers around 1920. As for dishes with cabbage rolls in tomato-flavored dishes,I'm guessing they would be later again.

Canned tuna is definitely an American thing, and I associate it with postwar Showa recipes. Certainly haven't seen anything like as many recipes for it from the 1990s on.

Commercial oil-based dressings weren't common in Japan for almost a generation after mayonnaise was first produced commercially here in 1925, although "salad oil" (as distinct from frying oil) first went on sale here in 1924. I hardly ever buy premade dressing, so I can't tell you much about the history of carrot dressing. I am guessing that it is a technological innovation as much as a taste innovation, because the first premade oil/vinegar dressings included only dried herbs, not vegetable purees. Shredded carrot salad, daikon salad, and new onion salad recipes are common in postwar Showa cookbooks...maybe why those three ingredients are so popular in puree-style dressings?

Curry - some people say that the Portuguese may have brought "vindaloo" style curry directly to Japan along with other foods which have become standard items in Japan. 

I have long thought that Belgian and Dutch food had an influence on Yoshoku, directly or indirectly, especially tasty fried snack foods that could be adapted to local produce and quite quickly produced without an oven. 

[Lisa Shock]

IIRC, the carrot based dressing was invented in the US (maybe at Benihana, as many copycat recipes give them credit) at one restaurant and got popular enough that a co-packer started making it and selling it to restaurants across the US. I read about this years ago, I cannot find the source. I've been searching online for the source for a couple of days now, to no avail. I live in the US, and while I have visited Japan, I have no idea if the dressing is or was sold there.

 

[helenjp]

Kewpie make an orange-colored pureed 5-vegetable dressing - no other big players seem to make a commercial carrot dressing.

FWIW, Amazon Japan lists the top 5 best-selling dressings as: Cobb Salad D., Toasted Sesame D., Vegetable Salad D w sesame seeds, Caesar Salad D, and Pureed Onion D. All but one of these made by Kewpie.

Edited February 28, 2016 by helenjp (log)