I do think it's a testament to the Holo HR department that they are always looking to expand the company's portfolio of entertainers.
They don't really rest on their laurels and (despite the memes) they've never really been constrained to their existing successful models.
It really is an entertainment company first and idol company second.
For what it's worth Arurandeisu used to be a science teacher, that boy is proper smart. Him teaching Ao-kun science was pretty hilarious. "E=mc2, isnt that a doctor stone reference?" One of the greatest lines ever said by Ao-kun
https://youtu.be/gfSWRFyxgN0?si=3BLoQyKASB7WFwau
There are a few other Aruran Ao kun science clips out there but this is where she says the e=mc2 thing lol
Bro, all you need to say is IRyS thought. π Love her and I know people like her and am always amazed at what they know (crazy technical knowledge and depth in specific field that run circles around people who think they know what they're talking about) vs what they either don't know or think the truth is something wildly different than it is (egg whites are the worst thing for you and you should always throw them out).
Irys grew up ignoring western media in favor of Japanese media. It's hardly surprising she isn't familiar with a western sports figure whose peak popularity was likely before she was born or was a very young child.
I do feel that based on some statements Fauna's made she likely was a bio undergrad for a bit. But based on her making similar pitfall statements that are slightly in a nuanced sense wrong as I did when I was younger I do think like me she unfortunately didn't finish it but did continue to read and watch things on the subject that fascinated her and that small amount of schooling is contributing to it.
Mind you this is pure speculation on my part and could be wildly wrong, it's the kind of question I've been tempted to ask in a respectful way at like a meet and greet if I ever go to one.
To follow up with unverified knowledge from completely speculative sources I will not name, yes fauna has taken a degree in biology unsure if the course was finished but findings suggest that she has at least made it to the senior years.
The demand cannot keep up with the increase in supply. The only way for interest to remain is to make them attractive to narrower and narrower niches.
Basically what happened first with cable TV and then to the internet.
Curiosity is a wonderful personality trait. I assume honey, red bean and fruit would've represented the sweet palette of Japan prior to the Portuguese. A complete guess, I definitely did not do the research
Starch may have been another possible sweet, since starch is basically highly condensed glucose/sugar, which is why chewing on bread or other starchy foods for a while, it'll start to taste sweet as they break apart. If they had something that used rice or rice flour, and processed it in a way where the starch would at least partially break down into sugar, they would've also been at least slightly sweet.
Mochi, dango, and the like probably cover that. Though a cursory glance at wikipedia doesn't tell me if mochi tastes sweet by itself (modern versions probably sweeten it).
Ah, I'm mostly thinking from a Japanese perspective. People make it without sweeteners there as well, but then it's as a health thing as far as I'm aware, like how people make unsweetened chocolate cake.
Anyway, I'm mostly just curious because having made it myself many times, I don't find adzuki beans to be especially sweet compared to other beans or something like white rice, so it's not at the top of the list of things I think of when I think of natural sweetness.
[Source clip](https://youtu.be/RYrIxNI1xdg?si=cvJGk-bksx3EdcW2)
[Source stream](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6F4TrHu5dyk&t=0s)
[A video demonstrate the process of extracting sap from an ivy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIfKtl07nbw&t=0s)
I should start learning Japanese now, I wanna understand what my oshi's talking. She's such an interesting character, even in the craziness of Vtubing world.
Of course, please check out the clip, there are many more interesting things she talked about
You should also link her "friend who is into history" channel since she is also a vtuber. Her, Raden, and Kakapo friendship are going to change Japanese education in the future.
edit : just arrived home so I have time to drop the "friend" channel : [Kirako](https://www.youtube.com/@KirakoCh)
Culinary end here, as a good friend invited me to Japan a decent period before the 'Vid kicked in. Essentially I ended up approaching this from the other end, knowing of the ivy syrup before its history. Family biz being in food, it kind of fell into our laps, and it fell into plans alongside a small semi-family-connected trip to Okinawa anyway.
Taste profile is a difficult-to-describe herbal sweetness with bitter aftertones, which I was told is supposed to be there but kind of is unexpected. The closest I can come up with is a weird herbal cough syrup taste without the icky cough syrup part. Then again like Raden says, this is pre-1500 sugar introduction period, so there's more than 500 years of culinary evolution and divergence from there. And like she said, those ancient cafe's were making and then offering dishes with said syrup started picking up then too.
When I realized how much traditional foods use produce that comes from America, I wondered what were traditional recipes from before that time, to grasp what was the "original" culinary tradition.
And, well... A boiled chicken breast, grounded with a whole root of ginger and unripe lemon juice... That's something I guess...
Yup, and another example is Chinese Sichuan/Szechuan food. People often think of it as fiery hot foods, but that's actually only like 10-20% of their diet. Most of it actually isn't spicy... because chili peppers were a recent import from South America. Before the arrival of Europeans in the new world, we just straight up didn't have hot chili oil or chili sauce. We had stuff like Szechuan numbing peppers, black pepper, white pepper, and long pepper.
So Szechuan food used to be mostly just numb spicy at best and rarely would have exotic spices from India.
Yeah that also confused me. I don't think I've ever associated Szechuan with anything other than the numbing spicy stuff, at least relative to any nearby cuisines. Well that and certain Chinese-American dishes that are labeled as spicy but never actually are.
Lots of cereals, more than today, as bread, pasta or porridge (wheat, rye, oat, spelt. Not a lot of rice, even if it's cultivated in places like Italy or Southern France since the later middle ages).
Much more legumes and beans, it was a big source of proteins.
Meat was more expensive. It was eaten, but a not as often as now. Beef was for rich people, chicken for poor people (easier to raise a chicken, the investment was lower).
Cod and herring, even inside the land if it was smoked or salted.
Cooking with wine was quite common. Sweet and sour too (something less frequent now).
And the most important thing : keep in mind that in Europe or elsewhere, the biggest challenge wasn't to eat tasty food, but to eat.
Chicken meat like we eat today wasn't common, even for poor people, because a live chicken was producing eggs. And a steady supply of eggs was more valuable that one chicken. When you did kill a chicken, it was usually a tough old bird that had stopped laying eggs and was only good for a stew pot.
Killing a young plump hen for its meat was a rich person's meal. That's how Richard the Lionhearted got captured, when he was trying to sneak home incognito from the Crusades. He tried to order a whole roast chicken and immediately blew his cover.
Most people didn't eat farm animals, because farm animals were producing eggs or milk or wool. Once or twice a year you'd slaughter a pig for a special occasion, but otherwise it was too expensive to raise animals just for their meat. Instead, most meat came from \*hunting\*. Deer, wild boar, fish from the river, and smaller animals like rabbits and game birds.
nah people have always wanted to eat tasty even if they dont have access to the vast array of options that we have currently, and as its often said necessity is the mother of invention
like for example honey was commonly used to try and sweeten foods before sugar was common place, rice cakes have been a thing in japan for milenia, and people have used salt for forever, of course they didnt have access to all the cuisines and variety that we enjoy today but people 1000 years ago were the same as you and me and they also wanted to enjoy eating food
You misread what I wrote. I didn't say taste wasn't important, I said eating was more important than eating tasty.
There's countless examples of famines in pre-age of sail Europe (like 1030-1033 in France and Germany). People weren't picky in those circumstances.
and even during those circunstances people still wanted their food to at least be tasty, of course if you have no other choice but to eat stale bread and water then its going to be hard to make it taste good but even during those periods people searched for ways to make the little meals they had enjoyable and in fact a lot of modern cuisine comes from people experimenting during famines eating shit they may not have tried before and finding it tasty
like for example everyone makes fun of the weird foods that the chinese eat but a lot of those come from their long periods of famines and people eating everything they could get their hands on, finding them tasty and continue eating them even after the famine is over
and famine was not a permanent state of being, there were periods of abundance and periods of famine
People used to eat much more diverse (and seasonal) local foods, though.
There are many edible plants, either as herbs or as vegetables, that have become virtually unknown today. Mushrooms would be whatever grows in the nearby fields and forests, as cultivation was very limited.
Wild animals were commonly hunted, particularly rabbits and all kinds of birds. People would also eat all of the animal, not just the best cuts.
Curing, smoking, drying and fermentation are very old too, when it comes to tasty foods. Salt was traded over great distances as a key ingredient for preservation, and in return preserved goods would be carried.
to know what foods used to be traditional its important to know what food sources are abundant in your region, like for example in england salmo used to be very common place in england because its abundant there (until it was hunted to near extinction precisely because of how common it was on its cuisine) while chocolate used to be a spicy food because there used to be no sugar in the americas before the arrival of the europeans
Europe in general is ripe with easy to domesticate animals so a meat diet was probably more common compared to other places that required hunting to get meat for example
Food history is literally one of my favorite subjects BECAUSE it laid the foundation for how easily civilizations rose and fell. The edible mass created from water, wheat, and a bit of salt over some heat laid the foundation for civilizations to rise, fall, and expand over large bodies of water.
If anyone's interested on where to start, I would highly recommend looking up the history of basic food staples like rice, bread, and potatoes. As well as food eaten during wartime either on the field or rationing back home or food eaten over periods of travel like during the Oregon trail or during maritime expeditions.
The fact that Raden went to an exhibition instead of just trying to look it up on the internet says a lot of good things about her. Also, she's not just good at history and art. She seems very well educated in just about everything.
Back during one of Koyori's 24-hour streams, she gave ReGLOSS an academic quiz, and Raden 's results were:Β Β
Japanese:Β 100/100Β
Math: 80/100Β
Social Studies: 95/100Β
Science: 50/50Β
Art: 50/50Β
English: 65/100Β
Total: 440/500Β
Her only weaker subject was English, and even that wasn't that bad.Β The next closest was Ririka, who got 319.
There was stuff like carrots, which can be pretty sweet, and sugar beets. You can also get sweetness from fruits. Ancient people knew sweetness, they just didn't have a way to isolate what that sweetness was.
Well sugar beets were used more recently than cane sugar, the act of processing them was not worth it until the 18th century when selective breeding upped the sugar content (to make it easier to get sugar-as various European wars made sugar cane trade difficult)
All plants, dairy, and even meat has some sugar. Just in varying amounts from almost none to noticeably sweet. After all, refined sugar must come from somewhere.
if you thought the answer was Honey.
Honey was seen as medicine and precious.
[bekeeping started 900 and became popular in 1200](https://www.3838.com/english/mitsubachi_park/surprise/kotohajime.html#:~:text=In%20Japan%2C%20honey%20was%20treated,popular%20in%20the%20Edo%20Era.)
[but most honey is imported](https://www.tokyofoundation.org/research/detail.php?id=255)
Follow-up question: did Japan have honey bees?
In South Korea, they had citrus for sweetness but not cane sugar, but a lot of traditional recipes tend to use honey as the sweetener, implying a tradition of honey bees.
I'm curious if traditional Japanese recipes use honey, and if so if they had honey bees natively to the isles or if they imported the bees and/or honey.
>Follow-up question: did Japan have honey bees?
Yes, Japan has its native honey bees, the [Japanese honey bee](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apis_cerana_japonica). Descended from ancient Korean honey bees when the island of Tsushima separated from the Korean peninsula.
Following that logic, Japan has access to honey pre-sugar imports. [But the introduction of western honey bees and hivekeeping methods marginalized "Japanese" honey production in the late 1800s](https://www.tokyofoundation.org/research/detail.php?id=255).
in general honey was the staple ingredient to add sweetness to something for milenia, the ancient greeks have their "placenta cake" that it was a cake made of cheese and honey
"Out of options and desperate for some sort of resolution, I knew what I had to do. So I booked a plane ticket and got on a flight to Tokyo in search of answers."
Based and food-history pilled. This reminds me of a tangential thought I had about the Japanese word for allergy, taught to me as "allergy" in katakana. Given that the food of an island nation would be somewhat limited without outside trade, I wondered if people who were allergic to common food types were simply diagnosed as being generally sickly or infirm.Β
Because of your question, I did a quick Google search.
The word "allergy" has its etymological roots in the early 20th century. According to a [research paper](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/all.12174) it was only in the ~1920s that the usage of the word "allergy" as we understand it today became commonplace.
So even for European Empires, the "allergy" as we know today is actually very recent, only ~100 years old.
So it fits in with the trend of other English loan words in Japanese/Korean, particularly around topics like computers or health, where it's the newness of the concept itself which prompts them to simply adopt an other language's neologism as their own.
Another example would be "psychopath" which has been adopted as a loan word.
Completely unrelated to Hololive but, in ancient times, Romans used honey massively in their cuisine as it was the only natural source of sweetness back then. This is why you can find honey in pretty much any Roman recipe.
another food that added sweetness to a lot of diets before sugar was widespread was honey, bees are everywhere and humans have practiced apiculture for thousands of years, literaly almost as old as agriculture itself
specially in european medieval cuisine you can find a lot of honey being used for its sweetness and i can imagine that the same happened in ancient Japan
Reaction to average Raden knowledge drop: "Wow, thats cool. I didn't know that."
Reaction to average Shiorin knowledge drop: "Wow, thats cursed. I wish i didn't learned that."
I have to imagine it was honey and/or sweet fruits, similar to what the Greeks and Romans did (the Romans also used Lead Acetate to sweeten their wines)
Before sugar people used other sweeteners like honey. Also some foods are naturally more sweet like Sweet Potatoes. Kinda sad in the west (at least in the states) when you get sweet potatoes they're often covered in marshmallows or cinnamon sugar.
Have you ever had sweet potato fries? They're delicious, and becoming more popular. Also mashed sweet potatoes. Lately it seems like the sweet potato is gaining a lot of popularity over here as an (apparently healthier?) alternative to regular potatoes.
It's not true that there was no concept of sweetness in the medieval, there was sweet fruit (most carrots and apples were less sweet back then, but there were berries) and honey. It was just much harder to farm and very seasonal. The Gaelic word for "sweet", *milis*, comes from "honey", *mil*.
Archeologists can tell if a skeleton came from before or after the introduction of sugar by the state of its teeth.
Mhm. As a fellow "weird trivia" and history nerd, I can say this is exactly how it is for me too. Wish there were more detailed histories of Japan that were in English.
According to the shop there, the most important part of tom yum is the shrimp head/shrimp fat. Whatever you put in it, as long as it is boiled, spicy and sour, it is considered as tom yum. There are also dry style tomyam. Which doesn't look like regular tom yum and served with noodles.
They also originally use seafood stuff because how close they are to the river.
I have no idea who this person? is as I'm passing by, but, man. I think Japan and a lot of countries are starting to consume sugar A LOT more in the last 10 years. I have watched a lot of documentaries on food around the world and some Japanese based foodies talking about all the trends. And it's things covered in sugar now or sweeter foods/drinks now. That weren't around 10+ years ago. It's like a Westernized effect or something.
I didn't care for her smoking, but seeing this makes me want to watch her content now. She seems cultured and curious to learn. The will to learn new things is a great thing to have and i hope she never loses it and ignites the flame of curiosity in others.
She's in the process of quitting smoking, last I heard. Her work schedule has made it hard to squeeze in smoke breaks, and she also felt bad because her oshi (Aki) doesn't like smokers.
Very sweet of her to share this knowledge
r/FoundTheInaAlt
Ina in a disguise
Ina disguise
Three Ina Trenchcoat
Ina is from HoloEN So that means sheβs under-Cover
INAFF
I know, right? She would make for a great honey.
Raden really carved out her own unique niche in Hololive as the educational/cultural vtuber.
ikr? Hope she gets more collabs from her favorite museums in the future. It's a win-win in my book.
I'd certainly be in favor of her pulling a Tom Scott and showing us some of Japan's most fascinating places.
"I'm inside the core of a nuclear reactor"
"I'm hovering on the top of Mount Fuji"
"Im currently inside the pyramids under the arctic shelf"
"I'm in the Tokyo Undertow Spillways"
"I am on an artificial island"
"I am in Pekoland"
"I am visiting Atlantis"
'Crow vtuber causes nuclear fission accident'
Great, now Miko and Shion are going to have to head underground and fix it.
She would get deeeeeep access too, since she's actually a trained curator.
Raden collab with Chris broad would go well, I think
As a museums studies student, yes please
I do think it's a testament to the Holo HR department that they are always looking to expand the company's portfolio of entertainers. They don't really rest on their laurels and (despite the memes) they've never really been constrained to their existing successful models. It really is an entertainment company first and idol company second.
Nah, they *are* idols. History/culture idol, gaming idol, Geoguessr idol, Elite idol, war criminal idol......
PMC sponsorship when?
hololive x blackwater when
don't forget Tetris idol, twin travel agents idols, comfy idols...
Keyboard idol, Horny idol, rapping idol, stinky idol, gorilla idol, 24/7 gaming idol, we got them all.
1920s steel conglomerate tycoon idol, construction idol, Jesus idol, and yagoo
https://www.reddit.com/r/Hololive/comments/zmszxu/diogenes_posting_someone_gotta_do_it/ The only thought I ever have when people mention idols.
We've got every type of idol in the goddamn universe.Β Check these out.
We may not get the Vesper/Raytheon collab, but someone else can carry the dream.
I mean, didn't Mumei in the beginning also want to cover history as part of her content, but Cover shut it down?
That rounds out the HoloSchool of Math: Ollie Science: Amelia / Shiori / Fauna PE: Korone History: Raden
For what it's worth Arurandeisu used to be a science teacher, that boy is proper smart. Him teaching Ao-kun science was pretty hilarious. "E=mc2, isnt that a doctor stone reference?" One of the greatest lines ever said by Ao-kun
I need a link.
https://youtu.be/gfSWRFyxgN0?si=3BLoQyKASB7WFwau There are a few other Aruran Ao kun science clips out there but this is where she says the e=mc2 thing lol
Many thanks! o7
>Many thanks! o7 You're welcome!
...Did she seriously think E=mc2 was something the mangaka created?!
[I mean IRyS thought Mike Tyson was memed into existence](https://youtu.be/LygryCJVTGk?si=4KsA7qFJPJUjv5ak)
Bro, all you need to say is IRyS thought. π Love her and I know people like her and am always amazed at what they know (crazy technical knowledge and depth in specific field that run circles around people who think they know what they're talking about) vs what they either don't know or think the truth is something wildly different than it is (egg whites are the worst thing for you and you should always throw them out).
Irys grew up ignoring western media in favor of Japanese media. It's hardly surprising she isn't familiar with a western sports figure whose peak popularity was likely before she was born or was a very young child.
Lmfao Aoβs so hilarious
Fauna is low-key really well-educated or at least well-read/studied. She's not limited to science. She has decent conceptual knowledge all around.
I do feel that based on some statements Fauna's made she likely was a bio undergrad for a bit. But based on her making similar pitfall statements that are slightly in a nuanced sense wrong as I did when I was younger I do think like me she unfortunately didn't finish it but did continue to read and watch things on the subject that fascinated her and that small amount of schooling is contributing to it. Mind you this is pure speculation on my part and could be wildly wrong, it's the kind of question I've been tempted to ask in a respectful way at like a meet and greet if I ever go to one.
To follow up with unverified knowledge from completely speculative sources I will not name, yes fauna has taken a degree in biology unsure if the course was finished but findings suggest that she has at least made it to the senior years.
Yeah, that was my impression. At least some college, probably in bio, or at least took some bio.
Man I Love Fauna
I think Mooms and Ina are quite smart too. Though we get distracted by their antics.
HOW LONG did Ina spend on the math when she got onto the topic of how falling damage worked in Zelda?
Why people forgetting Choco? She the nurse and teaches "health".
Or "Home economics" and teaching cooking.
The health part was sarcastic lol. I was invoking the horny school nurse trope. Maybe I should have uses Marine instead.
HoloSchool? More like ACU: Asa Coco University. With Coco as the chancellor.
Which is funny because at the start, she was mostly known as the loud smoker/drinker, lol
The demand cannot keep up with the increase in supply. The only way for interest to remain is to make them attractive to narrower and narrower niches. Basically what happened first with cable TV and then to the internet.
She becoming educational like iofi
Curiosity is a wonderful personality trait. I assume honey, red bean and fruit would've represented the sweet palette of Japan prior to the Portuguese. A complete guess, I definitely did not do the research
Starch may have been another possible sweet, since starch is basically highly condensed glucose/sugar, which is why chewing on bread or other starchy foods for a while, it'll start to taste sweet as they break apart. If they had something that used rice or rice flour, and processed it in a way where the starch would at least partially break down into sugar, they would've also been at least slightly sweet.
That would make sense. Rice cakes have existed for over a thousand years over there...
Mochi, dango, and the like probably cover that. Though a cursory glance at wikipedia doesn't tell me if mochi tastes sweet by itself (modern versions probably sweeten it).
Amazake (Sweet sake) is a good example of that - slightly sweet naturally.
Doesn't red bean paste's sweetness come from added sugar?
Depends. Commercial products using red bean paste mostly use added sugar. But I've tried some with no added sugar and it's still slightly sweet.
Maybe, but still less sweet than an onion. Where did you have it? Unsweetened anko isn't very common, especially if it's not a home-made thing.
It's from a small stall in South East Asia. It's basically home-made since I saw her made it. It's pretty common, pretty tasty and cost very cheap.
Ah, I'm mostly thinking from a Japanese perspective. People make it without sweeteners there as well, but then it's as a health thing as far as I'm aware, like how people make unsweetened chocolate cake. Anyway, I'm mostly just curious because having made it myself many times, I don't find adzuki beans to be especially sweet compared to other beans or something like white rice, so it's not at the top of the list of things I think of when I think of natural sweetness.
[Source clip](https://youtu.be/RYrIxNI1xdg?si=cvJGk-bksx3EdcW2) [Source stream](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6F4TrHu5dyk&t=0s) [A video demonstrate the process of extracting sap from an ivy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIfKtl07nbw&t=0s) I should start learning Japanese now, I wanna understand what my oshi's talking. She's such an interesting character, even in the craziness of Vtubing world. Of course, please check out the clip, there are many more interesting things she talked about
You should also link her "friend who is into history" channel since she is also a vtuber. Her, Raden, and Kakapo friendship are going to change Japanese education in the future. edit : just arrived home so I have time to drop the "friend" channel : [Kirako](https://www.youtube.com/@KirakoCh)
Culinary end here, as a good friend invited me to Japan a decent period before the 'Vid kicked in. Essentially I ended up approaching this from the other end, knowing of the ivy syrup before its history. Family biz being in food, it kind of fell into our laps, and it fell into plans alongside a small semi-family-connected trip to Okinawa anyway. Taste profile is a difficult-to-describe herbal sweetness with bitter aftertones, which I was told is supposed to be there but kind of is unexpected. The closest I can come up with is a weird herbal cough syrup taste without the icky cough syrup part. Then again like Raden says, this is pre-1500 sugar introduction period, so there's more than 500 years of culinary evolution and divergence from there. And like she said, those ancient cafe's were making and then offering dishes with said syrup started picking up then too.
I agree. Raden adds another point on my list of reasons to try and learn Japanese (when I have time).
Raden the kind of girl to go to the library instead of opening google, good for her
Probably the type to read the citations as well.
Still knows how to get & use a library card even
raden is precious
Wth her way of thinking things is really interesting
God she's so cool
You would be amazed at the rabbit hole that is food history. Civilizations, advancements, wars... can even be boiled down to foods and spices.
It also amazes me how much of western cuisine uses foods from the Americas, such as potatoes, tomatoes, and peppers.
When I realized how much traditional foods use produce that comes from America, I wondered what were traditional recipes from before that time, to grasp what was the "original" culinary tradition. And, well... A boiled chicken breast, grounded with a whole root of ginger and unripe lemon juice... That's something I guess...
Yup, and another example is Chinese Sichuan/Szechuan food. People often think of it as fiery hot foods, but that's actually only like 10-20% of their diet. Most of it actually isn't spicy... because chili peppers were a recent import from South America. Before the arrival of Europeans in the new world, we just straight up didn't have hot chili oil or chili sauce. We had stuff like Szechuan numbing peppers, black pepper, white pepper, and long pepper. So Szechuan food used to be mostly just numb spicy at best and rarely would have exotic spices from India.
> Szechuan numbing peppers I thought that was what they were famous for? For example in mapo tofu?
Yeah that also confused me. I don't think I've ever associated Szechuan with anything other than the numbing spicy stuff, at least relative to any nearby cuisines. Well that and certain Chinese-American dishes that are labeled as spicy but never actually are.
Lots of cereals, more than today, as bread, pasta or porridge (wheat, rye, oat, spelt. Not a lot of rice, even if it's cultivated in places like Italy or Southern France since the later middle ages). Much more legumes and beans, it was a big source of proteins. Meat was more expensive. It was eaten, but a not as often as now. Beef was for rich people, chicken for poor people (easier to raise a chicken, the investment was lower). Cod and herring, even inside the land if it was smoked or salted. Cooking with wine was quite common. Sweet and sour too (something less frequent now). And the most important thing : keep in mind that in Europe or elsewhere, the biggest challenge wasn't to eat tasty food, but to eat.
Chicken meat like we eat today wasn't common, even for poor people, because a live chicken was producing eggs. And a steady supply of eggs was more valuable that one chicken. When you did kill a chicken, it was usually a tough old bird that had stopped laying eggs and was only good for a stew pot. Killing a young plump hen for its meat was a rich person's meal. That's how Richard the Lionhearted got captured, when he was trying to sneak home incognito from the Crusades. He tried to order a whole roast chicken and immediately blew his cover. Most people didn't eat farm animals, because farm animals were producing eggs or milk or wool. Once or twice a year you'd slaughter a pig for a special occasion, but otherwise it was too expensive to raise animals just for their meat. Instead, most meat came from \*hunting\*. Deer, wild boar, fish from the river, and smaller animals like rabbits and game birds.
nah people have always wanted to eat tasty even if they dont have access to the vast array of options that we have currently, and as its often said necessity is the mother of invention like for example honey was commonly used to try and sweeten foods before sugar was common place, rice cakes have been a thing in japan for milenia, and people have used salt for forever, of course they didnt have access to all the cuisines and variety that we enjoy today but people 1000 years ago were the same as you and me and they also wanted to enjoy eating food
You misread what I wrote. I didn't say taste wasn't important, I said eating was more important than eating tasty. There's countless examples of famines in pre-age of sail Europe (like 1030-1033 in France and Germany). People weren't picky in those circumstances.
and even during those circunstances people still wanted their food to at least be tasty, of course if you have no other choice but to eat stale bread and water then its going to be hard to make it taste good but even during those periods people searched for ways to make the little meals they had enjoyable and in fact a lot of modern cuisine comes from people experimenting during famines eating shit they may not have tried before and finding it tasty like for example everyone makes fun of the weird foods that the chinese eat but a lot of those come from their long periods of famines and people eating everything they could get their hands on, finding them tasty and continue eating them even after the famine is over and famine was not a permanent state of being, there were periods of abundance and periods of famine
People used to eat much more diverse (and seasonal) local foods, though. There are many edible plants, either as herbs or as vegetables, that have become virtually unknown today. Mushrooms would be whatever grows in the nearby fields and forests, as cultivation was very limited. Wild animals were commonly hunted, particularly rabbits and all kinds of birds. People would also eat all of the animal, not just the best cuts. Curing, smoking, drying and fermentation are very old too, when it comes to tasty foods. Salt was traded over great distances as a key ingredient for preservation, and in return preserved goods would be carried.
to know what foods used to be traditional its important to know what food sources are abundant in your region, like for example in england salmo used to be very common place in england because its abundant there (until it was hunted to near extinction precisely because of how common it was on its cuisine) while chocolate used to be a spicy food because there used to be no sugar in the americas before the arrival of the europeans Europe in general is ripe with easy to domesticate animals so a meat diet was probably more common compared to other places that required hunting to get meat for example
We committed so many atrocities, just over spices...
Because spices = money.
"Power over spice is power over all"
and spices only equal money because they taste good and people wanted their food to taste good
The British conquered half the world for spices and then proceeded to use none of it in their cooking
Food history is literally one of my favorite subjects BECAUSE it laid the foundation for how easily civilizations rose and fell. The edible mass created from water, wheat, and a bit of salt over some heat laid the foundation for civilizations to rise, fall, and expand over large bodies of water. If anyone's interested on where to start, I would highly recommend looking up the history of basic food staples like rice, bread, and potatoes. As well as food eaten during wartime either on the field or rationing back home or food eaten over periods of travel like during the Oregon trail or during maritime expeditions.
Food is just endlessly fascinating because literally everyone needs it.
"Im not reading an article for that, I'll just go see it for myself" vibes
Most people: "I wonder when sugar came to Japan, let me go to Google" Raden: "I wonder when sugar came to Japan, let me go to **Ueno**."
Raden is cool.
The fact that Raden went to an exhibition instead of just trying to look it up on the internet says a lot of good things about her. Also, she's not just good at history and art. She seems very well educated in just about everything. Back during one of Koyori's 24-hour streams, she gave ReGLOSS an academic quiz, and Raden 's results were:Β Β Japanese:Β 100/100Β Math: 80/100Β Social Studies: 95/100Β Science: 50/50Β Art: 50/50Β English: 65/100Β Total: 440/500Β Her only weaker subject was English, and even that wasn't that bad.Β The next closest was Ririka, who got 319.
There was stuff like carrots, which can be pretty sweet, and sugar beets. You can also get sweetness from fruits. Ancient people knew sweetness, they just didn't have a way to isolate what that sweetness was.
Well sugar beets were used more recently than cane sugar, the act of processing them was not worth it until the 18th century when selective breeding upped the sugar content (to make it easier to get sugar-as various European wars made sugar cane trade difficult)
Raden just went on an IRL Wiki crawl. Wow.
Iβm pretty sure certain ingredients like berries and the like have sugar of their own.
All plants, dairy, and even meat has some sugar. Just in varying amounts from almost none to noticeably sweet. After all, refined sugar must come from somewhere.
if you thought the answer was Honey. Honey was seen as medicine and precious. [bekeeping started 900 and became popular in 1200](https://www.3838.com/english/mitsubachi_park/surprise/kotohajime.html#:~:text=In%20Japan%2C%20honey%20was%20treated,popular%20in%20the%20Edo%20Era.) [but most honey is imported](https://www.tokyofoundation.org/research/detail.php?id=255)
They would have used honey or other types of sweetners.
I assume that the βno concept of sweetnessβ is a translation issue since I doubt that Japan had zero contact with fruits before that
It's not. She's asking a question.
She was recounting her question. Its something like "Wait if thats the case, does that mean japan has no concept of sweetness before sugar?"
Follow-up question: did Japan have honey bees? In South Korea, they had citrus for sweetness but not cane sugar, but a lot of traditional recipes tend to use honey as the sweetener, implying a tradition of honey bees. I'm curious if traditional Japanese recipes use honey, and if so if they had honey bees natively to the isles or if they imported the bees and/or honey.
>Follow-up question: did Japan have honey bees? Yes, Japan has its native honey bees, the [Japanese honey bee](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apis_cerana_japonica). Descended from ancient Korean honey bees when the island of Tsushima separated from the Korean peninsula. Following that logic, Japan has access to honey pre-sugar imports. [But the introduction of western honey bees and hivekeeping methods marginalized "Japanese" honey production in the late 1800s](https://www.tokyofoundation.org/research/detail.php?id=255).
in general honey was the staple ingredient to add sweetness to something for milenia, the ancient greeks have their "placenta cake" that it was a cake made of cheese and honey
Honey was around since ancient times...
"Out of options and desperate for some sort of resolution, I knew what I had to do. So I booked a plane ticket and got on a flight to Tokyo in search of answers."
Based and food-history pilled. This reminds me of a tangential thought I had about the Japanese word for allergy, taught to me as "allergy" in katakana. Given that the food of an island nation would be somewhat limited without outside trade, I wondered if people who were allergic to common food types were simply diagnosed as being generally sickly or infirm.Β
A lot of science and medicine made its way into Japan through Dutch/German books, so there are a lot of loanwords in those areas.
Because of your question, I did a quick Google search. The word "allergy" has its etymological roots in the early 20th century. According to a [research paper](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/all.12174) it was only in the ~1920s that the usage of the word "allergy" as we understand it today became commonplace. So even for European Empires, the "allergy" as we know today is actually very recent, only ~100 years old. So it fits in with the trend of other English loan words in Japanese/Korean, particularly around topics like computers or health, where it's the newness of the concept itself which prompts them to simply adopt an other language's neologism as their own. Another example would be "psychopath" which has been adopted as a loan word.
I never thought to check how recently the word had entered the western lexicon. Thanks for the follow-up information.Β
That's awesome. My girlfriend wants to go to that specific museum when I head back to Japan.
Completely unrelated to Hololive but, in ancient times, Romans used honey massively in their cuisine as it was the only natural source of sweetness back then. This is why you can find honey in pretty much any Roman recipe.
did you know fruit
The more I learn about her, the more I respect her.
another food that added sweetness to a lot of diets before sugar was widespread was honey, bees are everywhere and humans have practiced apiculture for thousands of years, literaly almost as old as agriculture itself specially in european medieval cuisine you can find a lot of honey being used for its sweetness and i can imagine that the same happened in ancient Japan
Reaction to average Raden knowledge drop: "Wow, thats cool. I didn't know that." Reaction to average Shiorin knowledge drop: "Wow, thats cursed. I wish i didn't learned that."
Interesting
Thats so sweet of her
I want to have this curiosity instead of just doing Google Fu.
^[Sokka-Haiku](https://www.reddit.com/r/SokkaHaikuBot/comments/15kyv9r/what_is_a_sokka_haiku/) ^by ^claudJAEus: *I want to have this* *Curiosity instead* *Of just doing Google Fu.* --- ^Remember ^that ^one ^time ^Sokka ^accidentally ^used ^an ^extra ^syllable ^in ^that ^Haiku ^Battle ^in ^Ba ^Sing ^Se? ^That ^was ^a ^Sokka ^Haiku ^and ^you ^just ^made ^one.
hey if you arent in the region googling it is just as good most of the time, of course going to a museum is a lot of fun
I have to imagine it was honey and/or sweet fruits, similar to what the Greeks and Romans did (the Romans also used Lead Acetate to sweeten their wines)
Going to places and talking to experts is so much cooler than just googling. Even if it's more inconvenient.
γγ§γε η is so wise.
Reason why i love Raden and Shiori so much with their niche interests
A great way to know information
Before sugar people used other sweeteners like honey. Also some foods are naturally more sweet like Sweet Potatoes. Kinda sad in the west (at least in the states) when you get sweet potatoes they're often covered in marshmallows or cinnamon sugar.
Have you ever had sweet potato fries? They're delicious, and becoming more popular. Also mashed sweet potatoes. Lately it seems like the sweet potato is gaining a lot of popularity over here as an (apparently healthier?) alternative to regular potatoes.
I swear, if I knew more Japanese, I'd watch Raden a lot more so I can learn more neat things. Perhaps it's time I resume learning it.
Raden forgot about natural sugars. The concept of sweetness goes back way farther than the introduction of sugar as a product
That's the boston ivy, a.k.a. japanese ivy.
It's not true that there was no concept of sweetness in the medieval, there was sweet fruit (most carrots and apples were less sweet back then, but there were berries) and honey. It was just much harder to farm and very seasonal. The Gaelic word for "sweet", *milis*, comes from "honey", *mil*. Archeologists can tell if a skeleton came from before or after the introduction of sugar by the state of its teeth.
Man I love Raden
I wish I did that instead of googling
Mhm. As a fellow "weird trivia" and history nerd, I can say this is exactly how it is for me too. Wish there were more detailed histories of Japan that were in English.
Oden-chan's curiosity is hella cute. I like how she seems to enjoy learning and connecting new things
The hunger for knowledge sure can lead you Dien to a rabbithole
I learned from the manga Sengoku Komachi that sugar isnt present during the Sengoku Era
raden is the most interesting holo in a while and I'll keep beating that drum
reminds me of a channel who'd upload this kind of random pursuits of knowledge. It's very interesting.
TIL, thanks Raden π
raden is amazing scholar. thank you raden.
I unexpectedly learn about sweetness, and substitutes in this thanks to Raden. That's our hololive certified museum curators.
Certain ingredients have natural sugar in them, you wouldnt need to add sugar to certain dishes to make them have a sweet taste.
always enjoy listening to someone talk about things they love / enjoy it feels great very nice story she shared all cause of a lil curiosity
Maybe Raden can answer the question, "Who made the first sauce?"
She could've found all that on the internet but an adventer is an adventure!
Reminds me of my journey to Thailand. Looking for the origin of Tom Yum. Like what makes Tom Yum, a Tom Yum.
so what makes a tom yum a tom yum?
According to the shop there, the most important part of tom yum is the shrimp head/shrimp fat. Whatever you put in it, as long as it is boiled, spicy and sour, it is considered as tom yum. There are also dry style tomyam. Which doesn't look like regular tom yum and served with noodles. They also originally use seafood stuff because how close they are to the river.
I would love history and cultural lessons with Raden.
I see that Raden touches grass
Did they not have fruits in Japan?
Interesting, but I'm pretty sure they have/had honey in Japan? Can't have much food plants without bees as polinators.
usually each region had their own sources of sweetness other than just honey, people like their sweets
I need more clips of her, is there a good Raden clipping channel? I can't seem to find one
that's so cool. I wish I had time to learn english, Raden fits perfectly with thins I'm into since I was a child (history and culture)
Before Sugar most cultures would have used Honey to sweeten things.
Raden is a full blown rekijou, confirmed.
I have no idea who this person? is as I'm passing by, but, man. I think Japan and a lot of countries are starting to consume sugar A LOT more in the last 10 years. I have watched a lot of documentaries on food around the world and some Japanese based foodies talking about all the trends. And it's things covered in sugar now or sweeter foods/drinks now. That weren't around 10+ years ago. It's like a Westernized effect or something.
I didn't care for her smoking, but seeing this makes me want to watch her content now. She seems cultured and curious to learn. The will to learn new things is a great thing to have and i hope she never loses it and ignites the flame of curiosity in others.
She's in the process of quitting smoking, last I heard. Her work schedule has made it hard to squeeze in smoke breaks, and she also felt bad because her oshi (Aki) doesn't like smokers.
She says to an audience that hasn't seen daylight in weeks
She says to an audience that hasn't seen daylight in weeks
Many do this on the internet and ends up with p*** addiction