Yaksik (Sweet Rice with Chestnuts, Jujubes and Pine Nuts)

Yaksik, also called yakbap or yakban, is glutinous rice steamed, tossed with honey, sesame oil and soy sauce, mixed with chestnuts, jujubes and pine nuts, and steamed again until glossy and brown. It is eaten like a rice cake rather than a meal, above all at Daeboreum, the first full moon of the lunar year, and at big celebrations such as sixtieth birthdays and weddings. The yak in the name literally means medicine, but the Encyclopedia of Korean Culture cites the Joseon philological work Aeon gakbi, which explains that Koreans used yak to mean honey, which is why honeyed rice became yakban in the same way that honey cakes are yakgwa. On the wider idea of food as medicine, see yaksik dongwon.

The dish comes with a legend. According to Samguk yusa, the thirteenth-century collection of histories and tales, on the fifteenth day of the first month of 488 the Silla king Soji was led by a crow (in some tellings, by a talking mouse and an old man bearing a sealed letter) to discover a plot against his life. In gratitude the day became a memorial for crows, marked with offerings of sticky rice, and later writers took this as the origin of yaksik; the Korean Food Promotion Institute adds the folk detail that the rice was dyed dark to match the crow's feathers. This is legend rather than documented history, but it shows how long sticky rice has belonged to the full moon.

Firmer evidence comes from Goryeo. A poem by the late-Goryeo scholar Yi Saek, cited by the encyclopedia, describes sticky rice mixed with oil and honey and then with pine nuts, chestnuts and jujubes, sent from house to house at dawn. Joseon almanacs and miscellanies mention it repeatedly, and two sources show its fame abroad: Heo Gyun's food essay Domun daejak calls feeding yakbap to crows at the full moon an old custom of Gyeongju, the Silla capital, and says the Chinese learned to make it and called it Goryeo-ban, and an almanac recalls Korean envoys in Beijing handing it out at the full moon to delighted hosts. The nineteenth-century cookbook Gyuhap chongseo, quoted by the Encyclopedia of Korean Folk Culture, steams the seasoned rice slowly over a low fire for an entire day. See tteok and seasonal foods.

• Nuts and fruit: chestnuts, jujubes and pine nuts add a little fiber, manganese and copper, and pine nuts contribute unsaturated fat.
• A dense, portable energy food: steamed sticky rice with honey and nuts packs plenty of carbohydrate into a small piece, which is why it travels well to feasts and picnics.
• Traditional associations: its name and ingredients tie it to the Korean idea that food and medicine share a source, though it is best treated as a festive sweet. See yaksik dongwon.

• Classic (Seoul style): chestnuts, jujubes and pine nuts with honey, sesame oil and soy sauce; jujube flesh simmered into a paste is sometimes added for color and sweetness.
• Brown-sugar yaksik: modern recipes, including the encyclopedia's own, darken the rice with dark brown sugar as well as or instead of honey.
• Quick methods: home cooks often finish the second steaming in an electric pressure rice cooker rather than a steamer.
• Extras: dried persimmon, raisins, pumpkin seeds or cinnamon appear in some households.