Ten Noodles, Ten Stories

A record from Jōshō-ji temple in Nagano, dated Tenshō 2 (1574), is introduced as containing the line ‘soba-giri was served.’ It appears in a list of donors marking the completion of repairs to the temple’s Buddha hall, and is said to be among the oldest confirmable records of soba-giri as a dish. In Edo, a monk’s diary from Keichō 19 (1614) is said to record that soba-giri was served, and before the Jōshō-ji record became known, this diary was held to be the oldest.

The plant itself, buckwheat, has a longer history of consumption, but the leading theory places its origin in southwestern China, not Japan. What this card is concerned with is not the plant, but the technique of turning the flour into strands.

The pairing of soba and sake has old records behind it. There is said to have been a custom of drinking a cup while waiting for the noodles to finish boiling, called sobamae, and a late-Edo essay is introduced as containing a passage to the effect that ‘a soba shop always has sake.’ A theory also circulates that this began with a sake shop in Kanda, but no record has been found showing who started it, or when.

In 1910, Rairaiken, which opened in Asakusa, Tokyo, invited cooks over from Yokohama’s Chinatown and served a Chinese-style noodle dish adapted for Japanese customers. There is a way of calling this year ‘Year One of Ramen,’ but that is one critic’s personal label, not an officially designated anniversary. After the ports opened in 1859, Chinese-noodle cooking entered Japan through the Chinese communities living in the treaty-port settlements of Yokohama, Kobe, Nagasaki, and Hakodate, and in Yokohama it was sold under the name ‘Nankin soba.’

But there is an older record. Materials surrounding Nara’s Kōfuku-ji temple are confirmed to contain a description to the effect that, in 1488, a kansui noodle called keitaimen — made using a method from a Chinese household encyclopedia — was prepared and served. The Shin-Yokohama Ramen Museum positions this as the oldest surviving record of a Chinese-style noodle in Japan. The museum’s own timeline also notes an episode in which the lord of Mito domain was served a Chinese-style noodle in 1697, while explicitly stating that it never spread among ordinary people. An old record existing, and a dish taking root, are two separate things.

In 1958, packaged instant ramen went on sale. It is also the year a dish eaten at a shop became a food kept on the home pantry shelf.

A geographical work compiled in 1154 by the Arab geographer al-Idrisi for the King of Sicily is introduced as containing a description of a settlement near Palermo called Trabia. The content, to that effect, describes large quantities of ‘itriyya’ being made using water mills and shipped out by boat to Calabria and other points around the Mediterranean. What is written here is not an unusual local food, but an export industry already in place. This year is not ‘the year pasta was born,’ but ‘the year it can be confirmed to have already become an industry.’

The process of drying is what made this noodle transportable. It is kneaded from nothing but durum wheat semolina and water, shaped, and dried. Using no egg lets it keep longer, and the dry Mediterranean wind made that possible. A ninth-century Arabic dictionary is said to contain an entry defining itriyya as a string-shaped food made from semolina and dried before cooking, but the original text has not been confirmed.

It is passed down in telling that the direct beginning was in 1915, when a man named Ma Baozi started a beef-noodle stall on the streets of Lanzhou. Some accounts also introduce 1919 as the year he opened a fixed shop, but this is not backed up by contemporary newspaper or administrative records, and likely rests on family and local oral tradition instead. Later practitioners of the craft are said to have set a standard — ‘one clear, two white, three red, four green, five yellow,’ referring to a clear broth, white radish, red chili oil, green cilantro, and yellow noodles — and aligned the shop’s name to Lanzhou beef noodles as well.

In 2021, ‘the craft of making Lanzhou beef noodles’ was inscribed on China’s national list of intangible cultural heritage. This is an official record, promulgated by the State Council. Lanzhou is home to a large Hui population, and this beef-noodle dish is said to have developed as a halal dish made without pork. Being able to choose the noodle’s thickness when ordering is itself a sign of just how finely the hand-pulling technique can be controlled.

An almanac of seasonal customs said to have been compiled around 1849 is introduced as containing a reference to naengmyeon from Pyongan Province. It is said to describe, in essence, buckwheat noodles topped with radish or napa cabbage pickle, with pork added alongside. The original text itself has not been confirmed. A theory placing its origins further back, in the Goryeo period, is also seen, but no contemporary source has been confirmed to support it, and it remains within the realm of legend.

What is now called naengmyeon actually has two lineages that differ in what the noodle is made from. The Pyongyang lineage is built mainly on buckwheat flour, pairing a clear, cold broth with the brine of aged radish pickle. The Hamhung lineage centers on potato or sweet-potato starch, eating a noodle that is strongly translucent and springy with a spicy dressing. The Hamhung lineage is said to have spread from the 1950s onward, through the shops of people who carried this regional taste south. In 2022, the custom of Pyongyang naengmyeon was inscribed on UNESCO’s list of intangible cultural heritage, at North Korea’s petition.

A cookbook said to be Thailand’s oldest is introduced as containing a recipe that stir-fries rice and noodles together and seasons them with three flavors — chili bean paste, citrus juice, and sugar. Published between 1908 and 1909, a Thai cultural journal carries the observation that this is considered a precursor to today’s Pad Thai. The original text has not been confirmed.

In 1942, there was a policy call encouraging the eating of rice noodles. Set against the backdrop of wartime rice shortages, this is said to have helped push its later spread. What was encouraged at the time, however, was eating rice noodles in general — not one specific dish. The existence of a precursor recipe in the cookbook published between 1908 and 1909 backs up that distinction as well.

A record is introduced showing that in 1932, there was a khao soi stall behind a market in Chiang Mai. At the time, though, it is said to have been a much simpler dish — coconut milk not yet in use, just noodles ladled with a broth of simmered chicken or beef. This dish is thought to have been carried into Northern Thailand by Muslim caravan traders from Yunnan, by way of Burma and Laos. In passing through Burma, curry powder and coconut milk are said to have been added.

What catches the eye most in today’s khao soi is that the noodle appears twice. On top of boiled egg noodles goes the same noodle, deep-fried in high-heat oil until crisp. This addition of a fried-noodle topping is said to be a development unique to Thailand, not found in the preceding Yunnan or Burmese lineages. With a soft noodle and a shattering one sharing the same bowl, the texture changes over the course of the meal.

Laksa is said to have its beginnings in the food of the Peranakan — a culture born between Chinese immigrants and the local population. It is where a Chinese noodle tradition overlaps with the spices and coconut of Southeast Asia. In port towns along the trade routes — Penang, Malacca, Singapore, Medan, Palembang — each place grew its own distinct laksa. No account has been found that can single out any one of these as the place of origin. Its etymology, too, has two theories standing side by side, one tracing it to Persian and the other to Sanskrit, and neither has reached the status of settled fact.

Today there are two widely known lineages. Penang’s Assam Laksa builds strong tamarind acidity into a sardine or mackerel fish stock. The Nyonya, or curry, lineage pairs a coconut-milk and shrimp stock with curry paste. A bowl where acidity takes the lead, and a bowl where richness takes the lead — the two differ from the very way the broth itself is made.

A soft dough kneaded from wheat flour, egg, and water is spread thin on a cutting board or scraper, then scraped off bit by bit into boiling water. Because it sets wherever it lands, the noodle takes no fixed shape. It is neither rolled and cut, nor extruded through holes. Methods using a dedicated tool have also become widespread, but scraping it from a board is held to be the traditional technique. It is not dried for storage; the kneaded dough goes straight into the water.

In 2012, the EU registered ‘Schwäbische Spätzle’ (Swabian Spätzle) as a Protected Geographical Indication. Anything that does not meet the conditions set out in the specification cannot use this name. Its first appearance in the written record is said to be 1725, though the specific document has not been confirmed. It is explained as having originally spread among Swabian farming households as a staple that could be made from cheap flour and egg.

The name ‘laghman’ is said to be a loanword that entered from the Chinese lamian. The linguistic observation that Turkic languages have no native words beginning with the letter L is introduced as the grounds for this. Along with the noodle, then, the word for it traveled too.

What is documented in some detail is a migration into Central Asia. Following a rebellion between 1862 and 1877, some of the Hui people who survived it fled across the Tian Shan mountains into territory of the Russian Empire, and this is said to be the beginning of the people known in Central Asia as the Dungan. 1877, however, is the year of that migration — not the year the dish laghman was established. No material has been found that traces the origin of the dish itself. The technique of pulling the noodle by hand is said to share common ground with noodle-making in northern China. Today’s laghman has settled into a dish that pairs that noodle with a braise of tomato and lamb.