Appears in
Oxford Companion to Food

By Alan Davidson

Published 2014

  • About

Konnyaku also known as devil’s tongue jelly, a food extracted from the starchy root/corm of Amorphophallus rivieri (formerly A. konjac), an Asian plant known as konjac. Konnyaku is a perennial plant of the arum family, said to be indigenous to India and Ceylon. In its native countries and also in China it has been grown since ancient times. It was first brought to Japan by way of Korea during the Nara period (710–94) as a medicinal plant. Its cultivation as a food plant started about 400 years ago in Ibaragi prefecture in C. Japan.