The rice-and-wormwood cake is one of the traditional Korean foods.
Here is a story about it.
Once upon a time a mother took out some rice and asked her daughter-in-law to make cake for her husband, who left home to defend the frontier for years. But the family was poor, so the rice was not enough. The daughter-in-law fretted all night. Early in the morning she gathered a basket of wormwood, and processed them with much care and parboiled them before mashing with a pestle. Moved by her commendable mind, the mother-in-law joined in making the rice cake mixed with the wormwood.
When the daughter-in-law took the cake to her husband, she found the cake remaining not dried and spoiled despite a lapse of a long time. Her husband ate it with his fellow soldiers with relish.
With a fondness for cleanliness and plainness and a taste for pure and natural flavour, the Korean people have long made and eaten the rice-and-wormwood cake at home every spring. They believed that when they eat the cake made with wormwood that is medically effective for body chill, hypertension and bronchitis, they would contract no diseases for the year.
The cake varies in shape, colour, ingredients and making methods. The varieties amount to two or so dozens.
It can be made with such cereals as wheat, sorghum and maize, as well as polished rice.
The wormwood cake is more flavoured and delicious than other rice cakes, and it does not spoil and get hardened so fast, as part of its strengths. In particular, when stuffed with adzuki bean jam and steamed with pine-needles, it is peculiar in taste and good for nourishment.
The custom of using wormwood, an outcome of creation and wisdom of the Korean ancestors, has been further developed so as to enrich the dietary life of the people.
The custom is on the national intangible cultural heritage list.
Jo Myong Sun
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