New Sweetness: Konpeitō Reconstruction
“Use cinnamon and sesame for the centers [of the candies]. Place these in a smooth bowl.Heat sugar until just before it crystallizes into candy [ame], pour this over the cores, and roast. When these become bumpy on the edges, divide into three parts. Dye one part red, one part green, and one part white. Mix these three colors together. There are oral instructions.”
In 1569, Portuguese Jesuit missionary Lois Frois presented the daimyo Oda Nobunaga with a glass jar filled with hard, sugar-based candies.[1] In Portuguese, these candies were called confeito, and they became konpeitō in Japanese. Through the use of these konpeitō, along with aruheitō, kasutera, and other sugary sweets, missionaries were able to gain the trust of many Japanese people, Oda Nobunaga included, and with this trust, they were able to spread Christianity quickly and effectively.[1] This is not to say that Christianity would not have spread without sugar, but it is certainly an interesting anecdote to help explain the existence of sugary candy in Japan at this time. Before this time, sugar had existed within Japan, but it was more of a medicinal substance rather than anything to be consumed for pleasure.[1] Only after being introduced by these missionaries did sugary sweets as a widespread treat take off, even though it was primarily restricted to those in the upper class.[2] However, as Christians began to be persecuted, their origins were retold somewhat to control the anti-Christianity narrative.[1] Nevertheless, at the time of their introduction, all these konpeitō and aruheitō were very sugary, with little other flavor, but now they can be infused with all sorts of different flavors and colors with relative ease. The fact that these candies have existed continuously for so many hundreds of years just goes to show how important they are and have remained for the Japanese people.
For my project I decided to recreate both konpeitō based on recipes presented in both the Southern Barbarians’ Cookbook and Secret Writings on Famous Japanese Confectionery New and Old. These recipes are short and fairly basic, but the information that is presented is certainly enough to recreate these Portuguese turned Japanese candies. The skill needed seemed to be relatively minimal, and so long as one was patient enough, the process could likely be done by anyone.
“Wash rock candy once in water and drain. For 1 shō [1.8 liters] of sugar add 2 shō [3.6 liters] of water and heat to dissolve. Strain through a silk strainer. Boil down until half of it remains. Place poppy seeds in a different pot and heat over a low fire, then slowly cover these with the reduced sugar. Stir with a teaspoon. Repeatedly coat these with sugar while stirring, and they will grow as big as a berry. Next, divide the sugar into five parts and make these five colors. Dye green with dayflowers [tsuyugusa], yellow with gardenia, red with safflower, for white leave as it is, and [use] soot for black”
For konpeitō, as far as ingredients go, all you really need is water, sugar, and something to act as a core for the candy. I used sesame seeds for the cores of my recreation, but I could have also used poppy seeds. The core acts as the center of the candy, and is what binds the syrup when it rolls around in the pan. The Barbarian’s Cookbook also says to add cinnamon to the core, and while it is probably not necessary, for the sake of accuracy as well as variety of taste, I included it. In addition, the Secret Writings makes mention of various materials used for dyes, but as they range from plant material to soot, I chose to leave the konpeitō white by not adding anything.
To begin, I combined a cup of water and a cup of sugar in a small pot and put it on medium-low heat to allow the sugar to dissolve and the liquid to boil. While this was heating, I roasted sesame seeds in a frying pan on low heat, moving them around occasionally to allow both sides to be evenly heated. In addition, as the recipe called for sesame seeds and cinnamon as the core, I added a bit of cinnamon to the pan and mixed it with the seeds. After about half of the liquid in the pot remained, I removed the pot from the heat and began the long coating process.
I had mentioned previously that I believed this would not be a particularly difficult recipe, and all it really requires is a great deal of patience, and the coating process is where that comes into play. To begin with, I took a small amount of syrup, poured it in the center of the pan with the sesame seeds and began rolling the seeds through the syrup. I continued this until the syrup began to harden, and as the rolling slowed down, I added more syrup. Unfortunately, something I had forgotten to do before adding the syrup was actually testing the syrup to make sure it had been heated enough for the konpeitō, and after about twenty minutes or so of coating, I realized the clump of seeds I had would not turn into the end product I was looking for. I started the process again, this time heating the syrup even more, and as an extra measure, I did the cold-water test mentioned in the Barbarian’s Cookbook, giving me the result I was looking for.
My second test got a little closer to what I wanted, as I was able to use all the syrup in my two-hour coating process, creating a number of sugary clumps, which were in my opinion fairly inedible. While the syrup was definitely closer to the heat I needed, I thought I could have done better. In addition, I turned the heat off in the pan before I began coating, which in hindsight, did not make much sense. Finally, though, I had the information I needed to make a better batch.
Using what I had learned from my previous tests, I made some changes to the process that ultimately gave me what I wanted. To begin with, I needed to make the syrup hotter, which I achieved by first heating the pot on high and then adding the sugar and water when I thought it was sufficiently hot. This caused the mixture to boil almost immediately, and also gave the syrup a yellow color I had not previously seen. In addition, it gave a much better result in the cold-water test, creating a harder chunk of syrup when dipped in. I did the same process as I had last time, only this time, after roasting the sesame seeds, I kept the pan on heat, as I suspected that one of the reasons the syrup clumped up so much was because it was not hardening quickly enough. Sure enough, with both of these pieces of knowledge, the process went much smoother, as all the seeds were able to be coated with each application of syrup, and as the process went on, they were forming the star shapes I was looking for. Interestingly, this process only took about one hour, which made sense given that I did not have to mix the seeds for five or ten minutes with each application of syrup. Finally, I had the product I was looking for, and while they were not as big as I was originally anticipating, I now knew exactly what I needed to do in the future if I were to make more.
I was ultimately left with a number of these small candies, and I have to say that they were much tastier than I had originally guessed they would be. They were mostly very sugary, but the cinnamon and sesame seed core added a bit of flavor, although I suspect that if there were a little bigger, that taste might not be as noticeable. While to my modern tastes, I can imagine adding a bit more of other flavoring to these candies would make them even better, to those living 400 years ago, when they did not even have much access to sugar at all, I can imagine how these would be incredibly enticing.
Another aspect of this recipe I was curious about was how modern konpeito recipes compared to these ones from 300 years ago. Unsurprisingly, I found little difference between old and new, especially considering that an old recipe could work so well. The greatest differences I noticed were the modern recipes called for food coloring rather than plant material or soot, as well as most recipes suggesting adding some sort of flavoring to the syrup.[3] From a practical standpoint, I did not see anything about what temperature the sugar syrup should be at, which, from my own experience, I can imagine would be quite troublesome for anyone who attempts to replicate the modern recipes.
I learned quite a bit from performing this process, both in terms of practical knowledge as well as challenges to my assumptions. I had mentioned that I thought this would be a fairly easy process, but it became obvious that after three different attempts, that there was more to the process than I had originally guessed. I had never made any type of candy before, and it is now clear that a bit of tacit knowledge is needed to really make the konpeitō properly. Now that I know a bit more about how to identify consistencies of sugar syrup, this could be useful in the future if I were to attempt other sorts of candies, perhaps even aruheitō or other Japanese candies. I would definitely like to make more of these konpeitō in the future, and perhaps I will be able to make them different sizes, different flavors, or different colors. This was a very interesting and enlightening process, and I look forward to seeing what I can do with it in the future.
Bibliography
[1] Rath, Eric C. Food and Fantasy in Early Modern Japan. Berkley, CA: University of California Press, 2010.
[2] Mistuda, Tatsuya. Moral Foods. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press, 2019.
[3] Rutherford, Karen. “Awesome Recipe: How To Make Konpeito Candy At Home.” Cake Decorist, https://cakedecorist.com/how-to-make-konpeito/. Accessed April 20, 2022.
