Introduction
There is one taste that I crave. It is a combination of sour and salty. To trace this love of a particular taste, I can look back at my experiences as a young child, consuming only food my parents prepared for me. My first experience with food, beyond my mother’s milk, were macrobiotic staples derived from Japanese cuisine, like brown rice, miso, seitan, sea vegetables and of course umeboshi. The latter is what readily sticks in my memory. After the task of making obento boxes in my Anthropology of Food class, the sight, smell and taste of the umeboshi that were offered as items for our obentos sparked my taste buds. I realized that salty and sour sensation that I was craving was from a food that I grew up with: umeboshi! How does this intriguing pink, wrinkled, once upon a time plum, immediately throw me back to bouts of memory? And why did this taste, so far removed sweetness, become something I crave? Finally and most importantly, what does umeboshi have to offer the consumer? Before I dive into the latter question, I want to look at the function umeboshi had in my own life as well as historically.
A New Taste
In macrobiotics, umeboshi is used either as a food condiment or as a medicine for ailments. My family would supplement umeboshi paste for traditional American condiments. For example, instead of butter on an ear of sweet corn, my mother would smear umeboshi paste. At that time I did not know what butter on corn tasted like, so the sweet taste of cooked corn exemplified by the salty/sourness of the umeboshi paste was the complete experience of eating corn on the cob. The alternate medicinal function for my family was eating one whole umeboshi plum to cure a stomachache. In having a food that I was already accustomed used as a remedy, I always accepted the umeboshi as treatment. I remember nibbling the pickled flesh down to the pit. Next, my favorite part was splitting the pit with a nutcracker and eating the softened bitter seed within. Shortly after consumption my stomachache was gone. I began “faking” stomachaches to obtain more umeboshi and as I got older “sneaking” whole plums at any opportune time. My mother used to get upset at me because umeboshi was to be used sparingly.
I think that the reason I enjoyed the taste so much was partly to do with the experience of having a food item work to overcome an ailment. I also think that having umeboshi as one of the first foods I was introduced to created a positive relationship with that taste. As a child the particular taste of sourness and saltiness meant umeboshi. I do not think it would be so absurd to suggest that I learned the word “umeboshi” before I learned the words “sour” or “salty”. In a sense umeboshi encompassed a new taste, something beyond salty and sour. In other words, I would propose that the umeboshi plum describes an alternate taste; a taste that the English language does not have a word for. Also, there are rarely any foods in contemporary American cuisine that is advocated as both medicinal and flavorful.
History
Interestingly, according to The Kushi Institute “Ume is usually translated as 'plum', but this particular 'plum', prunus mume, is actually a species of apricot.” The ume tree holds a legacy in Japan with the white or pink ume blossoms reflected in ancient Japanese art and poetry. Ume blossoms look very similar to the traditional sakura (cherry) blossoms, but the ume tree blooms earlier and thus traditionally was a symbol for Spring. A Wikipedia article states, “Japanese tradition holds that the Ume functions as a protective charm against evil. For this reason, the Ume is traditionally planted in the north-east of the garden, the direction from which evil is believed to come. The eating of the pickled fruit for breakfast is also supposed to stave off misfortune.” According to Raw, the Art of Living the original fruit is actually inedible and even poisonous because the fruit falls from the branch before fully ripened into a form suitable for human consumption. Therefore, the recipe of pickling and drying salvaged the otherwise inedible fruit. The process has been passed down through generations and requires patience because the umes are left for a minimum of one month (and up to five years is acceptable) in a container with only sea salt. A loose, but heavy lid or stone is placed on top of the salted fruit and according to Eden Foods, “The combination of salt and pressure extracts the juice creating the pickle brine” and “Desirable lactic acid bacteria quickly multiply under these conditions inhibiting the growth of undesirable microorganisms and enzymes.” The final step is to dry the plums in the sun, and once adequately wrinkled they are returned to the juices. The other important component is the addition of Shiso (beefsteak leaves) during the pickling process or after the umes are dried. Eden Foods states “besides adding color to the umeboshi, red shiso contains a natural preservative called 'perilla-aldehyde,' that is documented to have over one thousand times the strength of synthetic preservatives used in food and when ingested contributes to digestive health.”
Just as the recipe does not have a precise method, there is no concrete history of the origins of umeboshi. Professor Watanabe gives a suggested historical account that the ume tree and the use of the fruit as medicine was transplanted to Japan from China in the Nara period (710-794). She also suggests “In the middle of the Heian period (794-1192), the umeboshi appeared in writing for the first time.” At that time and until the Edo period beginning in 1867 umeboshi was used mainly for medicinal purposes including fatigue and even packing wounds. Eventually the taste of ume went beyond medicinal purposes and in modern Japan it is a common ingredient in both onigiri (rice balls) and obento boxes. Interestingly, as discussed by Professor Watanabe, before umeboshi became a food source, it was only created with salt and not the shisho leaves. I wonder if the reason for adding the shisho leaves was initially for the added color, and then the practice became more viable with the nutrients and natural preservative the shisho added. In Japanese Mothers and Obentos, Allison states “Presentation is critical: not to the extent that taste and nutrition are displaced, as has been sometimes attributed to Japanese food, but to the degree that how food looks is at least as important as how it tastes and how good and sustaining it is for one’s body” (p. 197). Would the shiso even have been experimented with in food pickling if not for its color that the Japanese found pleasing?
Misrepresented Umeboshi
The significance of umeboshi in the Japanese diet is reminiscent of Italy’s tradition of lardo (pork fat) as discussed by Leitch. She states “Given its dietary importance, it is perhaps not surprising that it was also adopted as a cure for any number of health ailments from an upset stomach to a bad back” (p. 443). Even though this statement is made about lardo, I saw a similarity in a traditional food like umeboshi used to sustain digestive ailments and thus evolves to sustain many parts of a culture, whether medicinal, dietary or a component in a lovingly prepared bento by a mother for her child. However, unlike lardo, the making and distributing of umeboshi does not surmise political action. Also, Umeboshi has not become a “commodity subject” like cacao (Piltcher). This might be partially due to its sour/salty taste that does not suit the masses. However, how long will umeboshi stay outside the mass produced world?
In my research it was disconcerting to find that some umeboshi products made in Japan for American consumers have artificial additives and additional sweeteners. For instance on an online site, Asian Food Grocer, four of the six ume products have monosodium glutamate (MSG), corn syrup and red dye! The irony here is that when you do an Internet search for umeboshi (google search) the majority of website that come up advocate umeboshi as a “health food.” One particular website suggests using umeboshi to cure allergic reactions to MSG without any side note that some brands of umeboshi have MSG. I wonder if this is an American ideology of Japanese foods as pure and wholesome? If so, the result is American websites that advocate umeboshi as a cure all, while ignoring that some umeboshi contains the very additives these sites protest. What is more disconcerting is that if people are unknowingly eating the “artificial” umeboshi as a treatment for ailments, they probably are not receiving the results promised. Would my stomachache be cured if I consumed an umeboshi with MSG? Not likely. Also, how does this replace the true taste of umeboshi with an enhanced or altered version? As discussed by Haden in regarding the “commodification of sensation” and “how the fragile, ‘chemical’ history of taste is being usurped by simulations, as the focus is tightened on the immediacy of thrilling sensations. Chemical additives simulate the qualities of tastes, textures and other gustatory sensations, as the experience of tasting an actual food becomes an impossibility” (p. 349). So for a person who has only had the MSG umeboshi, I would argue that they do not know the true taste of ume.
Last Words
I am not suggesting that the new commodified umeboshi is near that of a Twinkie or a McNugget. However, the fact that brands are selling umeboshi with corn syrup and MSG is just the beginning. I wonder how much longer it will be before umeboshi becomes one the endangered foods on the Slow Foods Movement list: Another addition that needs to be added to the “Arch of Taste.” The possibility that truly scares me however is the knowledge that I would possibly enjoy the new artificial umeboshi over the traditional food that I hold dear in memory.
Additional Resources (not linked in text)
- Anne Allison, “The Obento as State Ideological Apparatus.” Anthropological Quarterly 64(4):195-208.
- Roger Haden, “Taste in an Age of Convenience.” In The Taste Culture Reader, Pp. 344-358.
- Allison Leitch, “Slow Food and the Politics of Pork Fat: Italian Food and European Identity.” Ethnos 68, 4 (December 2003): 437-462.
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