495 



the manufacture as I was able to make. Soy is made from 

 the seeds of the bean Glycine hispida, which is cultivated 

 in China and also in India, and the beans are imported from 

 China to Singapore for making Soy and Bean-cheese. 



The present price of the beans is high, six dollars a picul, 

 probably owing to the Russo-Japanese war. 



The Soy beans are first boiled, which causes them to swell up 

 considerably, and then put into stone jars about three feet tall 

 and two feet across, with a quantity of brine made of coarse salt, 

 which I was told was made of equal parts of salt and water. 

 The brine is first made in jars, and occasionally skimmed as the 

 extraneous matter floats to the top. The jars when full of beans 

 and brine are covered on wet or dull days with a conical tin cover 

 which is taken off in sunshine. At one factory I was told that 

 wheat flour was put into the jars with the beans, and a note in 

 " Spoil's Encyclopedia " states that an equal quantity of roughly 

 ground barley or wheat is boiled with the beans, but this does not 

 appear to be done here. 



The beans are left to soak for from sixteen days, when there is 

 a big demand for the product, to a year, and the longer it is 

 kept the better the Soy is considered. Six to eight months, 

 however, seems the usual length of time. 



The beans are then strained out, squeezed in a cloth, and the 

 deep brown liquor filtered through a cloth laid in a rattan basket, 

 and then boiled. It is afterwards poured into stone jars such as 

 the Chinese use for their pickled cabbages, and sold to various 

 places in the East. 



I could not find that any ferment was added to produce 

 fermentation of the beans, and the Chinese said there was none. 

 There is, however, a general idea of there being some secrets, 

 known only to the head man and religiously preserved by him, 

 as to the manufacture. This is, however, commonly stated by 

 any Chinese manufacturer, however simple and well know r n his 

 manufacture may be. 



There are two kinds of beans of the Glycine, black and white, 

 which are used separately. 



Soy is extensively used as a condiment both by Chinese and 

 Europeans in the East, and forms the basis of most of the sauces 

 used throughout the world. 



Bean Cheese. 



Bean cheese or bean -cake, is also make from the Soy beans, 

 but the white ones only are used. The beans are first cracked 

 in a stone quern or mill, worked by hand, the beans being poured 

 through a hole in the upper millstone. They are then immersed 

 in water for a day, which causes them to swell. Then they are 

 transferred to another quern and ground to the consistency 

 of a cream. This is boiled and when cool poured into a cloth 

 and squeezed and pounded on a small table with a square hole 

 in the centre till much of the water is squeezed out, when the 

 cheese is made into square flat cakes four or five inches across 



