Pilaf (Japanese-style) Period COrigin theory CVerified

Pilaf reached Japan at the end of a long journey. Persian polow became Turkish pilav, then the French riz pilaf, and that Western pilaf came to Japan as part of the Western cuisine that flowed in from the late Edo through the Meiji period.

From the middle to late Meiji era, cooks across the country devised yoshoku, remaking full Western cuisine for Japanese diners. Beginning with early-Meiji cookbooks such as Seiyo Ryori Tsu and Seiyo Ryori Shinan, and widening through late-Meiji recipe books and Taisho-era women's magazines, hotels and Western restaurants turned rice dishes Western-style, and pilaf made its way into the family living room. After the war it settled into both restaurants and homes, taking root as a yoshoku standard.

The main ingredient, rice, was a long-established grain of the land, at the center of the daily table from early on. Butter entered ordinary kitchens once dairy spread in the Meiji era. What Japanese Western-style restaurants gave the dish was a procedure: frying rice in butter and seasoning it Western-style. In time, a method of stir-frying already-cooked white rice Western-style took firm hold, settling not into a copy of the original procedure but into a form that suited the circumstances of the home kitchen.

Some take Japanese pilaf to be the same thing as true pilaf, in which raw rice is cooked in. But much of what is served as "pilaf" in Japanese restaurants and homes differs from the original method.

True pilaf fries washed raw rice in butter, then lets it absorb bouillon as it cooks. What took hold widely in Japan, by contrast, is a way of seasoning already-cooked white rice Western-style and stir-frying it, which is closer to fried rice. Because indica rice was not common in Japan, this stir-fry style became established, as the Seisenban Nihon Kokugo Daijiten, the Sekai Dai-hyakka Jiten, and the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (Meiji 150) all note in agreement. To speak of Japanese pilaf as identical to the European or Middle Eastern original is therefore not accurate.

The word "pilaf" appears surprisingly late in Japanese texts. The earliest confirmed use is in Furukawa Roppa's Showa diary, October of Showa 11 (1936), which the Seisenban Nihon Kokugo Daijiten cites. But the first appearance of a word is a separate matter from the making of a dish: there is a span of time between the reception through early-Meiji Western cookbooks (a lower bound of around 1900) and the settling of the name in the early Showa era. A rice dish that began in Persia and arrived by way of France came to rest, across the sea, in a stir-fried form of its own. That is where this dish's history lies.