Fushigi no Kuni no Bird - Vol. 4 Ch. 17 - Yamagata (1)

[MangaDex]

 

[pikokola]

welcome back

 

[MagicalCarcrash]

Oh my, it's back! And I think the art style change quite drasticly. I wonder what happened. Thanks for the chapter.

 

[Lord_Carson]

thanks for the update

 

[eerni]

thaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaank you!

 

[dmala13]

thanks

 

[freakofnature]

Good to have Bird back.

 

[Stickerparty]

Maaaan it’s been a while! Glad to see it up and going again thanks!

 

[Paru]

Good to see this back

 

[kuma]

thanks for the translation.

 

[Saybah]

Just binge read this. What a fun ride!

 

[DjAlexDubCheck]

Yes, so glad to see this back

 

[Simpleton]

@toriaezu (First comment I'm tagging, even if some of my earlier ones during this binge read might have been meaningful)

About egg and wine - given that what they should have to spare is rice wine (sake), it should be https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamagozake which is supposedly a healthy drink (which also matches the suggested utility mentioned in the story). So basically eggnog/egg toddy. (And she might only have been used to normal toddies, if any.)

 

[toriaezu]

@Simpleton, I thought about that, but dismissed it because tamagozake is always done with sake, not wine, and the text specifically said *wine*. Plus, it's mostly reserved for actual illnesses like colds/flus (egg protein keeps person nourished, sake keeps hydrated-ish and the alcohol improves circulation/pain relief). So while it's possible the author intended it to be thought of as tamagozake, there is no actual instance I could find (online, there could be non-digitized book records) of grape wine being used with egg.

 

[Simpleton]

@toriaezu Hmm.. I found an Italian recipe with Marsala wine, egg and sugar as a fortifying health drink (for small kids, only egg and sugar) - it's also apparently the recipe for a dessert called Zabaglione or Zabaione (although the dessert often includes cream or custard) "In the 14th century Italy, the recipe for Zabione was preserved, but the earliest Zavione was a wine cocktail thickened with egg yolk and spiced."

Then why/how that would come to Japan, including the use of probably very expensive wine.. well, beats me. (Although Marsala or Port wines would manage the travel best and thus be comparatively cheaper?)

 

[toriaezu]

@Simpleton I'm very skeptical of an Italian recipe coming over. If it was Dutch or German, perhaps, but there wasn't a huge Italian presence in Japan before the turn of the century. Especially in Yamagata, where Isabella Bird specifically mentioned in her book that pretty much all the "foreign" goods for sale like wine, whisky, tinned meat, etc, were all inferior quality imitations.

I'm tempted to say it's made up but given how much research Sassa Taiga puts into the story, there must be some truth to it somewhere. I have a suspicion that he's got some very obscure reference books that are out of print.

Regardless, it's impossible to say for certain what exactly the egg wine is or was meant to be without either finding a first or second hand source, or asking the author himself.

 

[Simpleton]

@toriaezu

Yea, Italy is far away, but the Portuguese variant of pretty much the same drink is Gemada (egg yolk, sugar, madeira wine - gemada is also apparently the translation for eggnog).
It having a Portuguese heritage (originally) would match up nicely with the Tempura that they seemed to be cooking in the example of cooking in the hospital?

But proper research (with asking the author as the first thing on the list) would probably be a lot smarter XD

 

[toriaezu]

@Simpleton Hmmm, hard to say, since tempura was brought in by the Portuguese to Nagasaki in the 16th century, and without a steady supply of imported wine (near impossible during the sakoku policy) I can't see a recipe like that making its way all the way up to Yamagata.

The impression I got was more of ignorance than any actual recipe. Kind of "Well, we have all this new imported stuff now, what do we do with it?" sort of feeling. In which case perhaps Tamagozake was the original recipe that got modified? I did find a result for eggs poached in wine, so perhaps the author mixed that up? I admit my google-fu is lacking as well, the search terms "egg" and "wine" and "Meiji era" are just too broad to get anything concrete.

 

[Simpleton]

@toriaezu

I could accept the poached eggs explanation the most I think. Tamagozake or other toddy variations should probably have registered as "weird", but finding a cooked egg in her wine seems more likely to engender the "this is outlandish" response.
So barring any actual facts, I'm going to accept your finding as the solution to the mystery.

(And yeah, there's a lot of trawling to find anything good when searching for wine egg drink too XD

 

[zoecohen]

lol dude was really like "I've got resting bitch face lady, lay off"