Not only litchi, but almost all fruits can be dipped in soy sauce in southern Fujian and Chaoshan: peaches, mangoes, plums, oranges, carambolas, olives, apples, watermelons and bayberries. It is best to go with a bowl of porridge. This is a satisfying midnight snack.
Why do locals cling to the taste of fruit dipped in soy sauce?
Replacing salt with soy sauce: deconstructing human's pursuit of salty taste
To deconstruct the taste of fruit dipped in soy sauce, we should start with the taste of soy sauce itself.
Protein in bean seeds is fermented and decomposed to produce amino acids. This is the basic element that constitutes the human body, and instinct gives us the pleasure of feeling amino acids. The Japanese call this pleasure "purport", while China calls it "freshness".
Starch and amino acids in beans undergo Maillard reaction under the catalysis of sunlight and temperature accumulated by fermentation, forming melanoidin composed of ketones and aldehydes. It endows soy sauce with deep color and unique aroma, and also makes its taste more complex and diverse.
Most importantly, salt participates in the whole process of bean fermentation, inhibits the production of miscellaneous bacteria and provides a salty bottom taste for soy sauce.
Yes, everything that China people have worked so hard to invent soy sauce is actually for the sake of salty taste-using less salt instead of salt, while keeping the taste level unchanged or even better.
Adding worthless beans has low requirements on land and high yield, which is a profitable business. This is the philosophy and wisdom that China people believe in "doing great things with less money" and "managing the family diligently".
In fact, salt, as the first condiment discovered, has been very valuable for most of human history. The coastline is as long as Europe. Before the Middle Ages, there was no salt in cooking. Only when serving, do you sprinkle salt on the dishes with a sense of ceremony. In the Bible, white and expensive salt is a symbol of noble character; At the table of the British royal family, salt can only be placed in front of the king, and others should decide the distance from salt by their status; In Da Vinci's The Last Supper, a salt shaker overturned in front of Judas predicted the death of a traitor.
In China, which has a vast inland area, "people are in poverty" and salt is more expensive. Yan Di and the Yellow Emperor fought bloody battles in Hanquan; Chu and Qin invaded Bashu because of salt resources. The famous saying of the first emperor: "He who gets salt gets the world" explains everything in that era. Even in the highly developed Tang Dynasty, salt tax still accounted for more than half of the national fiscal revenue.
Soy sauce, based on the reality that the whole society is short of salt, is a technology to make more condiments with less salt.
In essence, the taste of soy sauce is the same as the "superposition effect" of monosodium glutamate and salt: under the premise of reasonable use, monosodium glutamate and salt, which are composed of amino acid salts, have less sodium content than salt alone.
Therefore, the essence of dipping fruit in sauce comes from the ancient tradition of dipping fruit in salt.
Salt adds everything: the entanglement between human beings and condiments
In China, dipping fruit in salt is actually a very historical way to eat. The ancients even limited that only the high-purity sea salt "Wuyan" produced in Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces was the condiment specially used to match fruits.
In the Tang Dynasty, Li Bai wrote a poem: "Myrica rubra is the king on the jade plate, and Wu Yanyan is like a flower and snow." This is to put Yangmei in a delicate jade plate and sprinkle with Wu salt to eat; There is a saying in Zhou Bangyan in the Northern Song Dynasty: "The sword is like water, the house is better than snow, and the new orange is broken with ten fingers." This is even more particular. Cut the orange with a sharp knife made in Taiyuan and put the Yanwu on it to eat.
Until today, there is still the custom of washing fruits with salt water everywhere. Pineapple, bayberry and carambola can all be soaked in salt water. Besides washing and disinfection, people think that salt water can improve the taste and make the fruit sweeter.
There is even a kind of licorice fruit popular in the streets of Guangdong. Add salt to the juice of licorice, and then soak papaya, mango, watermelon and other fruits, especially those with strong sour taste. After soaking in licorice juice for several hours, the sour taste faded and became sweeter.
In Chaoshan, southern Fujian, fruit dipped in soy sauce is just one example of many "salty" fruits in China.
An interesting phenomenon is that fruits flavored with salt are mostly produced in subtropical and tropical fruits south of the Yangtze River or even south of Nanling Mountain. This diet custom has perfectly passed through the political centers of the north of the Yangtze River and the Yellow River valley in China. It is not difficult to guess that dipping fruit in salt may be just a "show-off" behavior to enhance the sense of ceremony in areas lacking tropical and subtropical fruits at first.
In fact, Japan, which is similar to China in north latitude, is also short of tropical and subtropical fruits for a long time. Nowadays, the price of watermelon in the Japanese market is self-evident. In contrast, Japan has also retained a large number of similar eating habits, such as strawberry dipped in salt, watermelon sprinkled with salt, plum dipped in salt, avocado mixed with soy sauce and so on. "Avocado dipped in mustard sauce is like eating oily fish sashimi", which is a famous line in the Japanese variety show Mimi Blue.
Although there is no shortage of salt in Japan, because the fruit is precious, it is necessary to use salt and soy sauce to enhance its taste level and give it more sense of ceremony.
Salt is the only substance in nature that can accurately correspond to the six flavors that human beings can feel: sour, sweet, bitter, salty, spicy and fresh. For people who lack salt, this rich flavor seasoning provides changeable possibilities for many precious and hard-to-obtain ingredients.
Xinjiang and Tibet in China, India and Pakistan in the South Asian subcontinent all have the custom of adding salt to milk tea. As a hobby that can satisfy the stomach and refresh the mind, salt can not only provide the taste, but also effectively cover up the bitterness of tea taste. This is the cultural spillover of China's tea soup made of "salt, cheese, pepper and ginger" in the Han and Tang Dynasties. It was not until the 12 century that sugar was invented at low cost, and sweet milk tea, which was easier to operate than salt milk tea, spread to the wider world in the west.