SOY
SOY is a thick and piquant sauce, made from the seeds of the SOY BEAN (Soga hispida), a plant of the natural order Leguminosæ, suborder Papilionaceæ, so nearly allied to the genus Dolichos (q. v.) as to be often included in it. It is a, native of China, Japan, and the Moluccas, and is much cultivated in China and Japan. It is also common in India, although, probably, not a native of that country. The seeds resemble those of the Kidney Bean, and are used in the same way. The Japanese prepare from them a substance called Miso, which they use as butter.
Soy is made by mixing the beans softened by boiling with an equal quantity of wheat or barley roughly ground. The mixture is covered up and kept for 24 hours in a warm place, to ferment. The mass is then put into a pot, and covered with salt, the salt used being in quantity about equal to each of the other ingredients. Water is poured over it; and it is stirred, at least once a day, for two months, after which the liquor is poured off and squeezed from the mass, filtered, and preserved in wooden vessels. By long keeping, it becomes brighter and clearer. A Chinese sauce, called Kitjap (Ketchup), is often sold in Britain as soy, but is very inferior to the true soy.