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Vegetables from Korea

Nabok kimchi of the Jeungbo sallim gyeongje (radish with stems and spices)침나복함저법 (沈蘿蔔鹹菹法)

A radish kimchi from the 1766 Jeungbo sallim gyeongje in which radish is kept with its leafy stems, mixed with cheonggak seaweed, squash and eggplant, spiced with chilli, cheoncho pepper and mustard, and given plenty of garlic juice. The National Folk Museum calls it the first recorded form close to today's chonggak kimchi. This is a text-only reconstruction; the sources give no amounts or times.

Fully documentedVegetables

Recipe

No fixed amounts recordedA historical recipe known from summaries; no amounts survive in the sources read.
Radish with leaves and stems[KoWiki][nfm-chonggak]
Cheonggak seaweed[KoWiki]
Squash and eggplant[KoWiki]
Chilli, cheoncho pepper and mustard[KoWiki]
Garlic juice, in plenty[KoWiki]
Starterspontaneous, as described for kimchi in general, whose bacteria are present naturally on the cabbages and other raw materials (Surya 2022)
Start
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What changes: Starting material: radish with its leafy stems still on

Step 1 of 3
Take the radish with its stems
Time
Not documented
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented
Which microbes the steps name, step by step
L. mesenteroides
Weissella cibaria
Lactobacillus pentosus
L. plantarum
Flavour
Not documented
Texture
Not documented
Colour
Not documented

Microbes at work in this step

Not documented for this step.

Method

Measured measured in a studySet fixed by a specification or tested recipeReported one source reports itTypical a general value, not sourced for this fermentUnconfirmed not yet checked against a source

At a glance

A radish kimchi from the 1766 Jeungbo sallim gyeongje in which radish is kept with its leafy stems, mixed with cheonggak seaweed, squash and eggplant, spiced with chilli, cheoncho pepper and mustard, and given plenty of garlic juice. The National Folk Museum calls it the first recorded form close to today's chonggak kimchi. This is a text-only reconstruction; the sources give no amounts or times. In the modern radish kimchis kkakdugi and chonggak kimchi (a related product), the strains that made no biogenic amines were Leuconostoc mesenteroides, Weissella cibaria, W. paramesenteroides, Lactobacillus pentosus and L. plantarum; no study of this recipe names microbes does most of the fermenting.

What makes this one different

The recipe keeps the leafy stems on the radish and spices it with chilli, cheoncho pepper and mustard, so it is an early chilli kimchi and the first recorded form close to chonggak kimchi.

Related ferments

Variants

  • Hwanggwa damjeo beop (황과담저법)The same book's cucumber recipe: three knife cuts filled with chilli powder and garlic, then soured, like today's oi-sobagi.

Safety

No safety limits are recorded for this 1766 recipe. In a survey of commercial chonggak kimchi, the modern kimchi closest to it, one sample held 131.20 mg/kg histamine, above the 100 mg/kg toxicity limit that the paper cites (Jin 2019). For kimchi in general, a review says salting and chilli powder hold back spoilage and disease-causing bacteria, and the lactic acid the bacteria make lowers the pH to 4.0–4.2, which most other microbes cannot tolerate (Surya 2022).

History and sources

Every number is labelled with how it is known. How this atlas is made

The Jeungbo sallim gyeongje (1766) also gives dongchimi, cabbage kimchi, abalone kimchi and oyster kimchi. Up to the early Joseon period radish was the key kimchi vegetable; from the mid-Joseon period kimchi took in chilli powder, jeot and soy sauce (Cho 2010).

Process times
The sources we found give no figure for how long any of its steps take.
Temperature, salt and pH
The sources we found give no temperature, salt or pH figure for any of its steps.
  1. [nfm-chonggak] National Folk Museum of Korea, Encyclopedia of Korean Folk Culture, Korean Food, Clothing and Housing (한국의식주생활사전), 총각김치 (Jeungbo sallim gyeongje 1766, 蘿葍醎菹); KOGL type 2, facts only; read 2026-10book
  2. [cho2010] Cho Woo-Kyoun 2010, A historical study of Korean traditional radish kimchi, Journal of the Korean Society of Food Culture 25(4), 428–455 (abstract)paper
  3. [KoWiki] Korean Wikipedia, 김치 (sections 역사, 종류, 지역별 김치; one-line definitions follow the Standard Korean Language Dictionary), read 2026-10: 김치, 조선 시대wiki
  4. [surya2022] Surya R. and Lee A.G.-Y. 2022, Exploring the philosophical values of kimchi and kimjang culture, Journal of Ethnic Foods 9, 20paper
  5. [jin2019] Jin Y.H., Lee J.H., Park Y.K. et al. 2019, The occurrence of biogenic amines and determination of biogenic amine-producing lactic acid bacteria in kkakdugi and chonggak kimchi, Foods 8(2):73paper