
The Oldest Cookbook in Korean - Thevet
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/first-korean-cookbook
======
bane
Something of note, Hangul was generally rejected among the literate elites in
Korean society for centuries, which were mostly men. However, it found
unexpected life as a written language for women, who otherwise didn't have
opportunities to learn Chinese script. While some written material exists of
Hangul being used to communicate between a man and a woman (usually a husband
and wife), evidencing that men _could_ read and write Hangul as well -- which
is not surprising as it's fascinatingly easy to learn to read -- most ancient
Hangul documents we find were written by some for women.

It wasn't until the 20th century, partially as a counter occupation rise of
national and ethnic identity against the Japanese colonizers that Hangul
became modernized and accepted as the general script for Koreans.

In North Korea, as further assertions of national identity, all remnants of
Chinese characters were purged and many loan words were provided with
"preferred" native Korean words. In the South, Chinese characters were/are
still seen as a prestige study and was even commonly mixed in with Hangul in
newspapers but the use of Hanja is rapidly declining in print.

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lehi
It's interesting to see what Old World cuisine looked like before the spread
of New World ingredients.

Editing in a quote from the article for repliers: _' Notably, there’s no
mention of gochugaru, the staple spice of Korean cuisine. Although gochugaru,
made from New World chile peppers, became available during Lady Jang’s
lifetime, “the book is really about the royal cuisine of her ancestors, when
gochugaru was not available,” notes Lady Jo.'_

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frutiger
As per ginko, this is post Columbian Exchange. However there are older
cookbooks, e.g. from 1390[1].

[1]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Forme_of_Cury](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Forme_of_Cury).

~~~
gerdesj
Perhaps, but this article is celebrating an ancient cookbook from Korea and
not England.

Not only that but: "Some historians even believe it could be the first
cookbook written by a woman in all of East Asia."

I am not familiar with the sexual politics/subtleties surrounding food, let
alone writing about it, in East Asia. I suspect, given what I know from these
parts (England), that women in East Asia had few opportunities to express
themselves in any form, let alone a book that comes down through the centuries
to today.

I suggest that Jang Gye-hyang did remarkably well and ought to be thought of
as one of the fore-founders of a part of modern food. Here in the UK we have
Mrs Beeton as a similar example (albeit rather later.)

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samatman
While what you say about opportunities may be true, _The Tale of Genji_ was
written by a Japanese woman. It's often considered the first novel.

~~~
gerdesj
I consider that a non-sequiter. I'm not trying to be rude but you have taken
my comment, said nowt about it and then produced a The Tale of Genji which is
nothing to do with food or the region we are discussing.

A cook book is on show here and not a novel.

You might like to investigate
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beowulf](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beowulf)
which is a poem written about the same time as The Tale of Genji. It isn't a
novel as such. It's an epic in poetic form which is basically a long story
with a lot of baggage!

Beowulf, I feel, helps to tie England to its roots and there are a lot of
roots. A lot of roots, not to mention a tangled thicket above ground!

~~~
samatman
I was responding to this:

> _that women in East Asia had few opportunities to express themselves in any
> form, let alone a book_

By pointing out that another woman in East Asia expressed herself in a book,
which was passed down the centuries.

I'm familiar with Beowulf; English is my native language. Talk about non-
sequiturs!

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supernova87a
I think it took me a while to understand (after being told by native speakers)
that Korean and Japanese are a bit of a linguistic evolutionary puzzle,
especially if you thought that because their characters look like Chinese,
their spoken languages are related to Chinese.

They are not. The languages must have come first / evolved independent of
China, and then a wave of foreign commerce / scholarly / government influence
over centuries propagated Chinese writing to them.

So the spoken language uses Chinese based characters to record the sounds in
writing, but it may not necessarily have relation to what the sounds are in
Chinese if someone were to read the characters as if Chinese. And the spoken
language is not at all related to Chinese (aside from some imported words). As
if someone encountered English alphabet words being spoken with totally
different sounds assigned to them.

That was very interesting to finally understand -- if I've even gotten it all
correct...

~~~
9nGQluzmnq3M
The modern Korean writing system (hangul) is unrelated to Chinese.

Also, it's quite common for languages to be written in scripts originally
developed for completely unrelated languages. Maltese is related to Arabic but
written in the Latin (English) alphabet, Mongolian uses Cyrillic (Russian),
Thai/Lao/Khmer derive from South Indian scripts, etc.

~~~
hnaln
That's not completely true. Hangul characters are based off of Chinese
characters.

~~~
kazagistar
Hangul is a syllibary where each character is formed from a consonant and a
vowel symbol being merged in a consistent way. Even if a few of those symbol
fragments are similar to chineese, the structural differences are stark enough
that calling the whole thing based on chineese is misleading and deceptive.

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papul1993
This reminds me of the Korean TV drama series Dae Jang Geum also known as
Jewel in the Palace.[1]

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dae_Jang_Geum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dae_Jang_Geum)

~~~
aaomidi
Have you been able to find a high quality subbed version of this anywhere?

~~~
papul1993
Unfortunatey, no. :(

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dionian
even more amazing when you realize this was just the first one in the newer
Korean script, and they had much older ones in the traditional Chinese script
that was widely used by Koreans until recently.

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codezero
It still blows my mind how recent in history humans have been able to pass
information into the future or across great distances. It’s amazing we know
anything.

~~~
ed25519FUUU
And why oral history was such an important part of so many ancient cultures.

~~~
codezero
I've been thinking about that a lot lately (mostly in terms of my own memory)
and a fun random thing I've been thinking of is that it's really impossible
(at least to me) to visualize something with any meaningful fidelity. I can
describe a scene, but that's just my description, it's so blurry.

When I hear a song I like, I can pretty much repeat it note for note when I
whistle, and it conveys really the same feeling and meaning, but it's also a
bit blurry on account of the details getting fuzzier like lyrics, specific
instruments etc... but it feels a lot more authentic to the original
memory/experience than anything I can ever visualize.

What I'm saying, is that I wonder if there's something special about how
spoken/vocal memory sticks vs other kinds of memory.

~~~
dontcarethrow2
I noticed that there is something there about vocal compared to visual. Some
years ago while messing around memorizing/reciting pi, I always thought I
imagined the numbers visually and recited from there. I'm bilingual and a
friend asked if I can do it in my mother tongue. It was weird, I was surprised
I was struggling. I definitely recite(in my head) in English, then I visualize
the numbers than I translate.

It was surprising because when I was even younger I thought I had a
photographic memory, I noticed it got weak over time and with memorizing some
of pi I thought I was bringing it back. And here I find it was mainly vocal.
With the points brought up here for oral tradition, it makes sense that vocal
memory has stayed strong.

~~~
codezero
I wonder if it’s mostly about the cardinality of the options.

Songs are made up of only a few discrete notes, but strung together, but
visual memory doesn’t really have a good analog. Pixels? That’s not how we
think. Maybe there is a way to remember a visual scene, the closest I can
think of is the memory palace technique, and it’s just damn hard to hone, but
it really is effective.

I think the trickiest thing is error correction. In a song, a missed note is a
riff, and likely close to the real note, in memory palace, there’s a risk it’s
just way off and even that being way off fucks up the next step in recall,
with no way to repair it.

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b34r
> she describes how the noblewoman would look down at the village during
> dinnertime, to see which homes did not have smoke rising from the kitchen,
> meaning the household had no rice to cook. She would then invite families in
> need to work on her land so she could feed them.

What a wonderful person. I’m glad her work is being preserved and honored.

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xenihn
>In one of Lady Jo’s many anecdotes about Lady Jang, she describes how the
noblewoman would look down at the village during dinnertime, to see which
homes did not have smoke rising from the kitchen, meaning the household had no
rice to cook. She would then invite families in need to work on her land so
she could feed them. “Even the term ‘superwoman’ is not enough to describe
Grandma Jang,” Lady Jo says.

I'm extremely confused by this take. Nobles have an obligation to not let
their cattle starve to death. This excerpt makes it sound like she's being
charitable by letting her peasants plant, grow, and harvest the food that is
then used to compensate them for their labor.

~~~
jinwoo68
You're assuming that Korean political/economic system was the same as the one
of Europe. It was not.

Nobles didn't own all the lands or people around them. Some of non-noble
people owned their own lands, others didn't and had to rent lands from
landlords.

So the story that you quoted means that Grandma Jang was generous to poor
people who have neither lands nor money to rent lands, and allowed them to
work on her lands.

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xenihn
How is that generosity and not exploitation?

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jinwoo68
Those who worked not just did the work but also got paid. That's what I
assume. I don't really know what the truth was (nobody would know), but the
intention of the story is that she provided a "job" to those poor people.

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jzer0cool
Any reference to the original cookbook (translated or not)?

~~~
yorwba
Korean Wikisource:
[https://ko.wikisource.org/wiki/%EC%9D%8C%EC%8B%9D%EB%94%94%E...](https://ko.wikisource.org/wiki/%EC%9D%8C%EC%8B%9D%EB%94%94%EB%AF%B8%EB%B0%A9)

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elhudy
Does anyone have a link to an ebook copy or scan?

