Title
Bottle for Soy Sauce
Creator
Made in Nagasaki, Japan
Date
1775-1850
Label
#229
Bottle for Soy Sauce
Made in Nagasaki, Japan, 1775-1850
Made of Hard-Paste Porcelain
Museum Purchase with Funds Provided by W. Groke Mickey
2018.7.1
You might think that the taste for Japanese food in Europe and the Americas began in the late 20th century, but you would be wrong. This bottle labeled in Dutch “JAPANISCHEZOYA [Japanese soy sauce]” is proof that at least some parts of Japanese cuisine were adopted in the West far earlier.
Soy sauce, made from fermented soybeans, wheat and salt,has been part of Asian cuisine since the 1100s, and it was there in the 1600s that Dutch merchants and sailors developed a taste for the salty, flavorful sauce. By the early 1700s, soy sauce was being exported to Europe, and European cookbooks even began including recipes on how to make your own “as good as the one that comes from Asia.”
This object is on display in the Japanese Export Gallery in the Reeves.
Bottle for Soy Sauce
Made in Nagasaki, Japan, 1775-1850
Made of Hard-Paste Porcelain
Museum Purchase with Funds Provided by W. Groke Mickey
2018.7.1
You might think that the taste for Japanese food in Europe and the Americas began in the late 20th century, but you would be wrong. This bottle labeled in Dutch “JAPANISCHEZOYA [Japanese soy sauce]” is proof that at least some parts of Japanese cuisine were adopted in the West far earlier.
Soy sauce, made from fermented soybeans, wheat and salt,has been part of Asian cuisine since the 1100s, and it was there in the 1600s that Dutch merchants and sailors developed a taste for the salty, flavorful sauce. By the early 1700s, soy sauce was being exported to Europe, and European cookbooks even began including recipes on how to make your own “as good as the one that comes from Asia.”
This object is on display in the Japanese Export Gallery in the Reeves.
Credit Line
Museum Purchase with Funds Provided by W. Groke Mickey
Citation
Made in Nagasaki, Japan, “Bottle for Soy Sauce,” Museums at Washington and Lee University: Online Exhibits, accessed May 17, 2024, https://exhibits-museums.omeka.wlu.edu/items/show/286.