shiitake
Cultural layer
浙江庆元香菇文化系统, the Qingyuan shiitake culture system (中华人民共和国农业农村部, Ministry of Agriculture, Nationally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems, second batch, 24 June 2014)
Classic Food of China (Yan-Kit So, 1992)
Route
PendingThe routes are written. They are not yet mapped.
This entry's cultural layer already names where it came from and how it moved. What it does not yet carry is that movement as structure: ordered waypoints with real coordinates, and a mechanism on each leg. Until it does, the layer stays an empty slot rather than a drawn line, because a map built from prose would be a guess with a projection under it.
1 of 409 entries carries a mapped route · nutmeg is the prototype
- Waypoints
Ordered places, each with its kind
- Coordinates
Real positions, with the gazetteer they came from
- Segments
From, to, and the mechanism that moved it
- Confidence
Documented, attributed or contested
- Summary
What the route argues, in a sentence
Names · co-equal, marked by how each one travelled
FoodwayPresent as a living food culture.
No names recorded.
Connections
12 bonds · 11 sourcedMiso soup with shiitake.
Dried mushroom carries 5'-guanylate and miso carries free glutamate, and the two multiply rather than add: the ribonucleotide raises the perceived savour of the glutamate far beyond the sum. It is the same effect Kuninaka measured in 1957 working with dried shiitake, and the same one that makes kombu and katsuobushi into dashi. Japanese kitchens arrived at it centuries before anyone could name the compounds.
Akira Kuninaka's discovery of umami synergy between glutamate and 5'-ribonucleotides, 1957 (with Kurihara, Umami the Fifth Basic Taste: History of Studies on Receptor Mechanisms and Role as a Food Flavor, BioMed Research International, 2015) · Glutamate and inosinate content of foods: seafood and cheese (Umami Information Center, accessed 2026-09-13)
Confirmed in Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art: red miso soup, page 157, where shiitake is the alternative to nameko.
Glutamate in the kombu and 5'-guanylate in the dried shiitake are weak apart and multiply together: the ribonucleotide raises the perceived umami of the glutamate far beyond the sum. Kuninaka identified the effect in 1957, working with dried shiitake, half a century after Ikeda isolated the glutamate from kombu. Both sit inside the tradition that built dashi on the combination first.
Akira Kuninaka's discovery of umami synergy between glutamate and 5'-ribonucleotides, 1957 (with Kurihara, Umami the Fifth Basic Taste: History of Studies on Receptor Mechanisms and Role as a Food Flavor, BioMed Research International, 2015) · 池田菊苗とうま味の発見 (特定非営利活動法人 うま味インフォメーションセンター, Umami Information Center, accessed 2026-09-13)
Confirmed in Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art: the steamed salmon casserole, page 212, built on a square of kelp with shiitake.
Japchae.
Confirmed in Real Korean Cooking: japchae, sweet potato starch noodles with stir-fried vegetables and beef, page 230.
Braised shiitake.
Read in Yan-Kit's Classic Chinese Cookbook, page 157, twenty small dried Chinese mushrooms red-braised with thick soy sauce, and page 165; the cited Classic Food of China was not the book in hand.
Stir-fried and braised.
Read in Yan-Kit's Classic Chinese Cookbook, pages 162 and 182, garlic in the wok with the dried Chinese mushrooms, which is what this book calls them; the cited Classic Food of China was not the book in hand.
Braising aromatics.
Read in Yan-Kit's Classic Chinese Cookbook, page 154, ginger minced into the marinade for the stuffed Chinese mushrooms, and page 162; the cited Classic Food of China was not the book in hand.
Finishing.
Read in Yan-Kit's Classic Chinese Cookbook, pages 157 and 166, sesame oil sprinkled over the finished mushrooms; the cited Classic Food of China was not the book in hand.
Nimono with shiitake.
Confirmed in Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art: mushroom relish, page 397, shiitake simmered down in sake and soy sauce.
Simmered toppings.
Confirmed in Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art: noodles in the pot, nabeyaki udon, page 313.
Score unexamined
Tea-smoked and braised dishes.
Bonds are drawn from culinary literature and origin-tradition references, tiered by source. Origin means a reference from the place. Witness means the pairing is the place's own and the reference documenting it was written from outside.
The score is cultural weight: how central a pairing is in the tradition that documents it. It is not a prediction of how two materials behave in a formulation and not a measure of chemical affinity. The scale is ordinal, because centrality is a judgement rather than a measurement: 1.0 where the pair is the dish, 0.9 a fixed named form, 0.8 a canonical dish, 0.7 recurrent across many dishes, 0.6 common, 0.5 attested, 0.4 marginal or compound-led.
Each score is set against a named dish and carries that dish in its note. Where a score has not been examined it says so, because an inherited figure and a researched one should not look alike.
The dish is named by a reader who knows the cuisine and cites a source appropriate to it. It has not yet been confirmed inside that source page by page, so a note records what supports a score rather than what has been checked in the book.
Studio Culinar-E, "shiitake", Pantry Archive, Studio Monk-E, 2026. https://studioculinar-e.com/archive/shiitake
/archive/shiitake
Bonds are tiered by source, origin-tradition references first.