My primary interest in this case is less determining how the filling enters the picture (there’s a long, varied history of custard filling across Eastern Asia, one that likely predates the advent of Boston Cream), than in what is going on with the naming. Is labelling all these different treats as “Delimanjoo” just an offhand shorthand that will soon fall by the wayside, or are we witnessing several subsets of snacks being subsumed under a corporate umbrella? Will Delimanjoo eventually come to signify all pastries of this stripe, as in prior historical cases of generic trademarking? Only time will tell, although I suspect some simplification is in the offing, considering that complex Korean words are difficult for Western audiences to master, and typing out Bungeo-ppang seems like a bridge too far for the Instagram crowd.
When fusion is discussed in culinary terms, it’s usually of the broader, cross-cultural sort, either occurring organically (Indo-Chinese, Chinese-Caribbean, Indo-Caribbean) or mandated by the exigencies of the market (any place you can get both Sushi and Pad Thai). But there are also smaller instances of synthesis, ones occurring incessantly within national cultures themselves, sometimes at the behest of foreign influence, sometimes owing to other factors. Take Delimanjoo, which is run out of a small booth in Manhattan’s Koreatown, sharing space with a steamed bun dispensary and doling out a small set roster of seemingly traditional pastries. These have individual appellations, yet here get classed together under the name of the shop, itself a portmanteau (Delicious, or Delice, the company’s name, and Manjoo/doo, for dumpling). Delimanjoo is a global chain that most famously sells these cute little corns stuffed with custard, a treat I’m convinced they did not invent, although I can find no immediate visual evidence of their existence anywhere else. Word of mouth, meanwhile, seems to indicate they’re spotted frequently within the Seoul subway system. For whatever reason, the K-Town location does not sell the as-yet nameless corns. When I purchased their piscine cousins, seen above, they were also classed under the broad umbrella of Delimanjoo, although they’re historically known as Bungeo-ppang, the Korean answer to Japan’s Taiyaki (“baked sea bream”) which themselves have evolved as a stylized descendent of Imagawayaki. All ordinarily come with sweetened adzuki red bean paste as filling, although the Korean version are modeled after carp instead of bream, and possess some other minimal aesthetic differences. A legacy of Japan’s 35-year occupation of the peninsula, the fish are a favorite at outdoor food stands and seasonal festivals. The ones at Delimanjoo have scrapped the less glamorous bean paste filling (although it’s still offered inside a larger-sized taiyaki pastry) in favor of custard, which to me seems to work better inside the corn cakes, the yellow stuffing offering a clever rejoinder to the outside shape. Delimanjoo also sells Walnut Cakes (Hodu-gwaja), whose innards remain mysterious to me. My primary interest in this case is less determining how the filling enters the picture (there’s a long, varied history of custard filling across Eastern Asia, one that likely predates the advent of Boston Cream), than in what is going on with the naming. Is labelling all these different treats as “Delimanjoo” just an offhand shorthand that will soon fall by the wayside, or are we witnessing several subsets of snacks being subsumed under a corporate umbrella? Will Delimanjoo eventually come to signify all pastries of this stripe, as in prior historical cases of generic trademarking? Only time will tell, although I suspect some simplification is in the offing, considering that complex Korean words are difficult for Western audiences to master, and typing out Bungeo-ppang seems like a bridge too far for the Instagram crowd. Whatever the outcome, it’s worth noting that Korean and Chinese bakeries remain one of the more fascinating laboratories for this kind of contemporary synthesis, attracting a largely youthful clientele who aren’t as beholden to old traditions as their parents, and whose tastes run toward the freewheeling mishmash of American and East Asian culture that defines the current fashion in both locales. In this vein, I’ve found consistently interesting examples of neo-patisserie at the multiple locations of Iris Tea & Bakery, from a jet-colored garlic bread blackened with charred bamboo to the delightfully geometric “taro cube.” In terms of this specific fusion, the icing on the proverbial fish cake (in this case chocolate) seemed borrowed from the old local standby that is the Italian-American butter cookie, even affecting a similar sprinkle coating near the front of each fish. Fifty years hence, we may all still be eating Delimanjoo in this fashion, while the once-beloved butter cookies remain only a distant memory. As a final note, and as another reminder that we’re not the only country in which fusion freely occurs, it appears that cakes of this stripe (among them the elusive corns) have also popped up in the Philippines. They of course contain specialized fillings endemic to the region, including pastilla de leche, offering another prismatic example of international amalgamation.
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