Investigation of Sun-cuisine in Modern Culinary Literature

Sun-cuisine is a traditional Korean side dish. This study examined the methods used to prepare Sun-cuisine in 11 Korean recipe books published over the last 100 years. The main ingredients of Sun-cuisine were typically vegetables, fins, fur, feathers, meat, legumes and mushrooms dipped in wheat flour or mung bean starch powder and stuffed with various minor ingredients known as "so". These dishes are highly seasoned and boiled in meat stock or steamed in a double boiler, after which they were sprinkled with toppings. Various materials are used as the main ingredients. When vegetables were used as the main ingredients, they were sprinkled with salt, sliced and stuffed with beef or mushrooms. Meat stock was then poured on top of the vegetables and they were steamed. A total of 38 food materials were used as the minor ingredients, while 25 materials were used as seasonings and six foods were used as toppings. Pine nuts were widely used as a minor ingredient, seasoning and topping. Sun-cuisine is generally made using various powders such as starch or wheat flour. Sun-cuisine was a kind of royal court food in the past that was served as a side dish. Recently, Sun-cuisine is eaten less often because its cooking process is too delicate and complicated. Therefore, additional studies to enable the modernization of the Sun-cuisine cooking process should be conducted with the goal of revitalizing the beauty and taste of this traditional food.