The Great Sushi Craze of 1905, Part 1 | Hacker News Reader

The Great Sushi Craze of 1905, Part 1

eccentricculinary.com

64 pointssergeant321 comments

What's extremely funny to me is that this article is at least half about how much we underestimate (or flat out don't know much about) the people of the 19th and early 20th centuries.

And the sole comment thread here is full of people saying "No way were people in North Dakota capable of eating sushi in 1905".

Actually, they're saying it's likely they were eating fresh water fish, which I think is a very astute observation that the article doesn't go into. Japan itself did not bother eating salmon for fear of parasites until much later.

To be honest, the article highlights some interesting history, but seems a bit editorialized for my tastes. As I commented there:

Very interesting article, but there seems to be an odd amount of time spent in adulation of Japan that I think could give an impression of less history and more "rose tinted glasses." It wasn't that long before the focused time period that Westerners were not treated so kindly in Japan.

"And that, in microcosm, was the general attitude of 19th century Americans to both the Chinese and the Japanese; one despised, the other admired. Over and over in newspapers and magazines of the era, the Japanese are praised as a clean, well-bred, delightful race, the “most civilizable” in Asia. The Chinese? Not so much."

This seems to be laying it a bit thick on the generalizations. The Japanese weren't exactly welcomed with open arms by everybody (and I'd love to see some citations about the implied universal hatred of the Chinese [and some more background information on why that is so wouldn't hurt if we're going to be throwing that in there anyway, but that too could fill its own article]). Indeed, the Japanese, too, were excluded once the "yellow" fear descended upon them just like the other East Asians.

Speaking of gyoza (which btw I think you've misspelled), there's a bit of "delicious" irony there when considering that it very likely has Chinese origins (even when just purely considering an etymological analysis), and yet, as your article points out, from a 19th century Westerner's view, it's good riddance to the Chinese folks, in with the Japanese folks!

They weren't flying in salt water fish to North Dakota in 1905. And so their sushi was probAbly local fresh water fish.

They probably all got worms, or maybe even had worms to begin with. The freshwater clam lifecycle is one of the more complicated life cycles and interesting.

Salt water fish could possibly have made the trip via train from Seattle, packed on ice, although I'd expect it to be rather expensive.

Smoked salmon also makes very tasty sushi if fresh isn't available. Tamago is an option that might appeal to a reluctant North Dakotan.

Oh, and salmon can be found in some waters of North Dakota; I don't know if they're landlocked or what, but that's an option too.

Salmon makes for /very/ tasty sushi (I prefer the nigiri variety).

Even in the early 1900s, as far as I can tell people living in North Dakota would likely not have been unfamiliar with interesting seafood (or at least had neighbors who were).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_emigration_to_the_Un...

As part of the ancestry of that Swedish immigration wave to the Midwest, all I know of is lutefisk, which is by no means sushi. It's about the most vile thing you can imagine - dried cod turned to fish jello in lye. You can smell it from miles away when it's being cooked, and... well, the smell is worse than the taste, but to think of equating that with sushi...

I don't think you can even call it seafood.

> It's about the most vile thing you can imagine

Surströmming beats lutefisk for that title.

Wait to try or smell Fisikh[1] and you'll change your mind instantly.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fesikh and pronounced like this "Fisíj" borrowing from Spanish

Lutfisk does not taste much at all and can be pretty decent if prepared properly. You generally want some strong tasting condiment to it like fresh ground black pepper on it though.

Sounds like they either imported or imitated a lot of other Japanese stuff based on the content of that first news clipping.

Sure, they're not going to find it locally available, but I don't see why it would be impossible for someone wealthy to get what they wanted.

Even a wealthy person in 1905 couldn't get fresh fish from the ocean. The Wright brothers didn't even fly until 1903. And the train from either coast would be a couple of weeks.

As someone else mentioned, it was probably tamago, or maybe beef. Or maybe even local fish but pickled, which would have gone with the vinegar rice.

Or maybe they used local fish raw and just risked getting worms.

Or maybe they froze it, like most sushi now? That would take care of the risk of worms. They had freezers available in 1905 - no idea how widespread.

That makes sense. Assuming they had freezer cars on the trains. Or I guess you could try freezing the freshwater fish, or holding it at a temp close to freezing for awhile.

Shipping food by refrigerated rail was quite common in 1905.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refrigerator_car

In 1905 trains were crossing the continent in 4-5 days. North Dakota was likely 2 days or so by rail from the Pacific Ocean.

Sliced thinly enough, you can pick out the parasite cysts on a light table. No freezing necessary.

A couple weeks? I don't know much about the state of the railroads in 1905, but the Pony Express could get a letter halfway across the continent, on horseback, in 10 days. Fifty-five years beforehand.

It seems entirely reasonable to me that a person in North Dakota could get fish delivered from the coasts, on ice, in a couple of days. Now, did they? I honestly have no idea.

Heck, half of the point of the article seemed to be that we seriously underestimate the people (Americans, in this case), of the 19th and early 20th centuries.

There was a french colonel who was a rival of Teddy Roosevelt when Roosevelt was raising cattle out west. I don't recall his name, and my google fu is failing me. Anyway.

One of the colonel's enterprises was a stagecoach line to take salmon from Seattle to New York on ice in 7 days. So, anything's possible.

Trout makes pretty good sushi, plenty of that up there.

Also re: worms, I've been fishing most of my life and other than some swampy places like Louisiana or some mucky looking rivers/lakes, worms have never been a problem?

Could be biased, I do most of my fishing in the Colorado rockies and have not had problems with worms there.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com