Dark soy sauce
Soy sauce (also called soya sauce in British English) is a condiment made from a fermented paste of boiled soybeans, roasted grain, brine, and Aspergillus oryzae or Aspergillus sojae molds. Soy sauce in its current form began about 2000 years ago in Western Han dynasty of ancient China and spread throughout East and Southeast Asia where it is used in cooking and as a condiment.
Soy sauce (酱油) is considered almost as old as soy paste — a type of fermented paste (Jiang, ) obtained from soybeans — which had appeared in Western Han dynasty and was listed in the bamboo slips found in the archaeological site Mawangdui. There are several precursors of soy sauce that are associated products with soy paste. Among them the earliest one is Qing Jiang (清酱) that had appeared in AD 40 and was listed in Si Min Yue Ling (). Others are Jiang Qing (酱清), Chi Zhi (豉汁) and Chi Qing (豉清) which are recorded in Qi Min Yao Shu () in AD 540. By the time of Song dynasty, the term soy sauce (酱油) had become the accepted name for the liquid condiment, which are documented in two books: Shan Jia Qing Gong (山家清供) and Pu Jiang Wu Shi Zhong Kui Lu (浦江吴氏中馈录) in Song dynasty.
Like many salty condiments, soy sauce was originally a way to stretch salt, historically an expensive commodity. In Zhou dynasty of ancient China, fermented fish with salt was used as a condiment in which soybeans were included during the fermentation process. By the time of Han dynasty, this had been replaced with the recipe for soy paste and its by-product soy sauce, by using soybeans as the principal ingredient, with fermented fish-based sauces developing separately into fish sauce.
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