Kecap

Soy sauce
A bowl of soy sauce
Mandarin Chinese name
Traditional Chinese	醬油
Simplified Chinese	酱油
Literal meaning	"sauce oil"
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin jiàngyóu Wade–Giles chiang4yu2 IPA [tɕjâŋ.jǒu] Yue: Cantonese Yale Romanization jeungyàuh Jyutping zoeng3jau4
Cantonese/Taiwanese name
Chinese	豉油
Literal meaning	"fermented bean oil"
Transcriptions Yue: Cantonese Yale Romanization sihyàuh IPA [sìː.jɐ̏u] Jyutping si6jau4 Southern Min Hokkien POJ tāu-iû
Burmese name
Burmese	ပဲငံပြာရည်
IPA	[pɛ́ ŋàɴ bjà jè]
Vietnamese name
Vietnamese	xì dầu or nước tương
Thai name
Thai	ซีอิ๊ว (rtgs: si-iw)
Korean name
Hangul	간장
Literal meaning	"seasoning sauce"
Transcriptions Revised Romanization ganjang McCune–Reischauer kanjang
Japanese name
Kanji	醤油
Kana	しょうゆ
Transcriptions Revised Hepburn shōyu
Malay name
Malay	kicap
Indonesian name
Indonesian	kecap
Filipino name
Tagalog	toyo

Soy sauce (also called soya sauce in British English) is a Chinese condiment made from a fermented paste of soybeans, roasted grain, brine, and Aspergillus oryzae or Aspergillus sojae molds. Soy sauce in its current form was created about 2,200 years ago during the 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 during the 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 the 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) during the Song dynasty.

Like many salty condiments, soy sauce was originally a way to stretch salt, historically an expensive commodity. During the 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 the 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.