one made by pouring warm water over wild Indian mustard leaves in a jar which was placed on a heated floor to ferment the mixture. This method is called muyom ch'imch'ae, or 'saltless fermentation/ It also includes more exotic recipes that use pickled pheasant flesh and pheasant meat, but the most popular was the nabak kimchee, an everyday kimchee that would have been served in many Korean households.
Umsik Timibang, by Lady Sokkye (1598-1680) of the Andong Chang clan, was the first cookbook written in Hangul. It includes recipes for wild Indian mustard leaf kimchee, pheasant meat kimchee and other kinds of pickled pheasant flesh, and nabak kimchee (a watery kimchee made with flat slices of radish).
Jars used for storing such seasonings as sesame salt, chili powder, and soy sauce.
Chungo Sallim Kyongje (The Expanded Countryside Economy) (c. 1766) contains the first mention of the use of chilies and chili powder in kimchee. Many of the types of kimchee mentioned are similar to those of today, indicating that contemporary types of kimchee began to establish themselves in the mid-18th century.
The recipe for saengch'i ch'imch'ae calls for cucumbers that have been peeled and julienned to be soaked in cold water. Boiled pheasant meat is sliced up like the cucumber, and both ingredients are combined in a warm brine to ferment like nabak kimchee. There are also recipes for kimchees that combine vegetables and fish or meat. Among them are saengch'i tchanjihi 'and saengch'ichihi, which use pickled cucumber fried in oil. with pheasant meat and a seasoning of soy sauce.
In 1655 a man named Sin Sok compiled a book entitled Nongga Chipsong (A Compendium for the Farming Household). It contains an almanac-like section listing dishes eaten during the various seasons of the year. Two of the foods recorded here are ch'imgwajo and ch'imjupcho. The latter is made by mixing eggplant berries and wheat bran and burying the concoction in hot horse manure for about a month. This corresponds to today's kanjangji.
Eleven different kinds of kimchee are described in the book Yorok (Important Records), dating from the late 1600s. None of them list chili peppers as an ingredient. Only kimchees made of radish, cabbage, wax gourd, bracken, ch'ongt'ae beans and other such vegetables are given, along with an explanation of tongch'imi, a watery dish made by salting radishes whole. The muyom ch'imch'ae, or 'saltless kimchee 7 described is made by immersing radish in clear water and leaving it for three to four days until a froth develops, at which point the liquid is drained off, fresh water added, and the radish allowed to ferment further.
Around 1715, Hong Man-Son wrote a book entitled Sallim Kyongje (Counstryside Economy); it had a section on cookery that contained descriptions of various types of kimchee. Most of them do not contain chilies but are made by pickling vegetables in salt or vinegar, in some cases with spices. The book introduces five kinds of kimchee called cha, a variant of cho. These cha-type kimchees consist of rice and salted and fermented fish, making them similar to the fish sikhae dishes of today.
Implements used for grinding spices. Left is a maja, used by inserting the fingers in the holes and scraping at the seasonings with the rough, rounded surface. Below, a glazed ceramic bowl with a rough interior texture.
Sallim Kyongje divides kimchee production into two categories: those that employ bland methods requiring only small amounts of salt and those that use salty methods. (The author puts cabbage kimchee in the bland category.) He also divides cucumber kimchees into two groups: the tchanji type, simply preserved in salt, and the sobagi type, in which the cucumbers are stuffed with spices and herbs. Other kimchees described in the book are Yongin oiji (a cucumber pickle), winter eggplant kimchee, abalone kimchee and oyster kimchee.
Chungbo Sallim Kyongje (The Expanded Countryside Economy), published in about 1766 at the end of the reign of King Yongjo (r. 1724-76), was written by Confucian scholar Yu Chung-lm and is an expanded version of the earlier book. It does not have a separate section on kimchee, but in the gardening chapter the author names some vegetables and mentions cho (kimchee) as a common way of processing them and chili powder as an ingredient in some kimchees
The description of radish tchanji says that it is made of radishes with their stems and leafy tops still attached, sea staghorn, pumpkin and eggplant; spiced with chilies, Japanese pepper and mustard; and immersed in garlic juice. It is similar to today's chonggak kimchee. He describes a yellow cucumber kimchee as being made by cutting three slits in each cucumber, stuffing the slits with chili powder and garlic and allowing the kimchee to ferment, a dish that resembles today's oi sobagi. This book documents the use of chilies and chili powder, and also of garlic, green onions and chives as kimchee seasonings rather than main ingredients, a further step in the development of the use of chili in kimchee.
In the forested, mountainous region of Kangwon Province, wooden crocks were developed. A section of log was hollowed out and fixed to a base. Such wooden crocks offered the advantages of easy portability and long-lasting durability. They were widely used instead of the more fragile ceramic variety. The one shown here is the largest extant wooden crock in Korea, measuring 128 cm in height and having a diameter of 80 cm. The diameter of the base is152 cm.
In olden times when one bought pickled shrimp paste (saeu chot) it came in a small crock like this. When the shrimp boats caught great quantities of shrimp at a time, they pickled them in crocks right there on board to keep them from spoiling before they could get them to market.
Since pot-bellied crocks took up too much space compared to their storage capacity, crocks shaped for more compact storage were developed. It is surmized that the circumference of the bottom was made smaller than that of the mouth so that the hands could be inserted between the crocks more easily for moving them around. Similar crocks were used for other kinds of chotkah
During this period Korean kimchee also spread to China. In Kim Chang-Op's 1712 account of his travels in that country, he says: "There was an old woman there who had immigrated from Korea and made her living by making kimchee. Her tongchimi tasted exactly like that made in Seoul." In Kyesangijong, published in 1803, the author writes: "The kimchee at the interpreter's house was made in imitation of our own and was quite good." Although we cannot be sure exactly what sort of kimchee this was, the reference provides one more piece of evidence that Korean kimchee had spread to China and gained popularity there. What is known, however, is the contemporary Chinese kimchee called Sichuan paocai that resembles Korean tongchimi. It seems that tongchimi was introduced to Sichuan by some of the Sichuanese soldiers sent to Korea to help fight off the Hideyoshi invasions during the Ming Dynasty.
During the 18th and 19th centuries, there are more and more written references to kimchee: Kyongdo Chapchi by Yu Tuk-Tae (1747-1800) gives a recipe for making sokpakchi: "Boil a broth of fermented baby shrimp paste and allow it to cool. Add radish, cabbage, garlic, chili pepper, turban shell flesh (Turbo cornutus), abalone and croaker. Store." The author says the concoction ferments to a spicy-hot flavor. Another interesting title, Imwon Simnyukchi, written by So Yu-Gu in 1872, presents a complete compendium of 19th-century Korean cookery. It divides the various kimchees into four types: omjangchae, chachae, chechae and chochae. Omjangchae includes kimchees that are usually eaten in the winter months; they are fermented in salt, brewing dregs and spices and are intended to be stored for long periods of time. Chachae and chochae
