Yakgwa (Honey Cookies)

Yakgwa is the leading member of yumilgwa, the honey-and-oil pastries described in hangwa, where their Goryeo-era fame, the bans of 1192 and 1353 and the dish's Buddhist roots are told. The Encyclopedia of Korean Culture explains the name: yak, medicine, refers to the honey in the dough, in the same sense as yaksik and yakju. The folk encyclopedia's entry, by Jang So-young, adds that sesame oil and honey were both long used as medicines, and that the pastry began as a stand-in for fruit, so a fruit made with medicines became medicine fruit.

The 18th-century scholar Yi Ik, in Seongho saseol, wrote that these grain-and-honey sweets were first shaped like the fruits they replaced, but were later cut square because round pieces were awkward to stack high on ritual tables. Ingredients were costly. The court record of the 1795 banquet for Lady Hyegyeong's sixtieth birthday lists yakgwa made with flour, honey, sesame oil, pine nuts, cinnamon, black pepper, ginger and sugar, and the folk encyclopedia notes that the yakgwa cost 15 nyang, more than twice the 7 nyang for boiled sliced beef. Wheat flour itself was often imported through China.

One town built a reputation on it. The Encyclopedia of Korean Culture relates, from Jeong Yak-yong's Mongmin simseo, that King Injo, ill and unable to find anything to his taste, sent a eunuch for Suwon yakgwa, only to have the magistrate refuse to send a private gift without a formal order. Later, according to Choe Yeong-nyeon's Haedong jukji (1925), Yongjusa, the temple that served the tomb of Crown Prince Sado, made yakgwa good enough for the royal tomb rites. Yakgwa still goes on the ancestral rite table and the wedding gift table, but mass-produced packs have also made it an everyday snack. See Suwon and royal banquets.

• A small, ceremonial sweet: yakgwa was made for rites and feasts and is rich enough that one or two pieces satisfy.
• Low in sodium: unlike most banchan, it contains very little salt.
• Traditional associations: honey and sesame oil were traditionally regarded as medicinal, which gave yakgwa its name; this reflects history rather than any proven health effect.

• By shape: pressed in a patterned mold for classic yakgwa, cut large (dae-yakgwa) or small (so-yakgwa), cut into squares (mo-yakgwa, the shape used for ancestral rites) or pressed in a dasik mold (dasikgwa).
• Suwon yakgwa: the Encyclopedia of Korean Culture records that Yongjusa worked ground pine nuts, pepper, cinnamon and toasted sesame into the dough for an even crisper result.
• Layered mo-yakgwa: dough rolled about 1 cm thick and cut in squares, which separates into flaky layers when slow-fried.
• Commercial yakgwa: small, mold-pressed rounds sold in packs, often sweetened with grain syrup rather than honey.