Transpacific beans

Edamame are actually just immature soybeans. The word is usually used in reference to the dish, not the plant itself. In Japanese, edamame literally means “stem bean” because the beans are often sold still attached to the stem.

References to edamame can be found as far back in history as 1275, when the Japanese monk Nichiren wrote a note to one of his parishioners thanking them for the edamame offering they had left at the temple. Soybeans and edamame were also referred to in documents from the early 1400s from China, during the reign of the Ming Dynasty. Soybean leaves were eaten in times of famine and were said to have medicinal qualities. They were also cited as being a good snack in the early 1600s in China, probably not during times of famine, as a “snack” is something of a luxury.

It wasn’t until 1936 that different varieties of edamame were mentioned in an english text. It took us that long to officially recognize this soybean type as a “green vegetable” or an “edible bean”. And it wasn’t until 2003 that the word edamame became a part of the Oxford English Dictionary.

There’s something of a linguistic lag across the Pacific.

Sources

Shurtleff, William, and Akiko Aoyagi. History of edamame, green vegetable soybeans, and vegetable-type soybeans (1275–2009): extensively annotated bibliography and sourcebook. Soyinfo Center, 2009.

Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, n.d. Web. 24 May 2016. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edamame?oldformat=true>.