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It must have been extremely difficult for the Dutch to maintain the quality of the soy sauce shipped all the way to the Netherlands by way of Batavia, right on the Equator and around the Cape of Good Hope. How did Dutch merchants prevent the products from being spoiled without any of the refrigeration or vacuum packaging technology we have today? The following is an excerpt from the Thumberg's Journal of Travel in Japan by C.P.Thumberg, a Swedish doctor/botanist who worked for the Nagasaki Trading Firm as a medical doctor. "Japanese people produce extremely high-quality soy sauce, much better than the Chinese equivalent. A large amount of soy sauce is shipped to Batavia, India and Europe. The Dutch discovered a reliable method for preventing soy sauce from being degraded or fermented at a high temperature. They boil soy sauce in an iron pot and pack it into bottles applying bitumen (coal tar) to the stopper." (Excerpts from the Thumberg's Journal of Travel in Japan translated by Tamaki Yamada) As shown in Panel 4, though the amount of soy sauce exported from Nagasaki to the Netherlands via Batavia was recorded by the barrel, soy sauce was, in fact, repackaged into bottles at the Nagasaki Trading Firm before being shipped. In 1790, 550 comprador bottles were used for the first time to export "sterilized soy sauce". This seems to refer to the soy sauce that was boiled and packed into bottles with coal tar-applied stopper. |
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Trading records of the Dutch East India Company (National Central Archive, Hague, the Netherlands) |
｜Exhibition TOP｜
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