Jiang - what Confucius insisted on eating

[Benjamin Barrett]

In "The Art of Fermentation" (2012, p. 23), Sandor Ellix Katz quotes "Analects of Confucius":

Confucius "would not eat a food without its proper jiang," ...

He is citing someone else, Huang. I find the quote "would not eat a food without its proper fermented sauce" in a couple of quotes on Google as well.

Other Google hits note that this is from book 10, chapter 8, verse 3 of the Analects (http://ctext.org/analects/xiang-dang). The relevant part is: 不得其醬. The word in question is 醬, which is translated there as just "sauce." Wiktionary (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E9%85%B1) says the same. (It is the first character in 醤油, soy sauce.)

http://park11.wakwak.com/~kitai/Kitai_Shoyu/MAME/reference-1d.html, however, says that in "Rites of Zhou" (周禮), 醬 is thought to have been a liquid flavoring made by mixing meat and grain mold (麹, kouji (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspergillus_oryzae)), then adding alcohol and allowing to ferment.

Katz also quotes William Shurtleff and Akiko Aoyagi, who cite "Bencao gangmu" (本草綱目):

"Jiang is like a military general who directs and can control the poison in food. It is just like a general controlling the evil elements in the population."

Googling on jiang fermented each in quotes yields 200K+ hits, including yan-jiang, jiang-gua and jiang-sun. It seems we have a treasure trove of fermented jiang words in English.

I'm sure he provides the proper citations for Huang and Shurtleff/Aoyagi and I would like to explore more jiangs (Katz uses the plural), but I have to go get oysters now.

Benjamin Barrett
Formerly of Seattle, WA

Learn Ainu! https://sites.google.com/site/aynuitak1/videos

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org