yokan

• yōkan, youkan

From Japanese 羊羹(ようかん) (yōkan).

yokan (countable and uncountable, plural yokan)

1. A thick jellied dessert made of red bean paste, agar, and sugar, usually sold in block form and eaten in slices.
   • 1965, Natsume Soseki, translated by Alan Turney, chapter 4, in The Three Cornered World (UNESCO Collection of Representative Works, Japanese Series), Chicago, Ill.: Henry Regnery Company, published 1967, →LCCN, →OCLC, pages 66–67:

     Looking into the cake bowl which she had brought I saw that it contained some green ‘yokan’ made from bean jelly. I think that if^{[sic – meaning of]} all cakes, yokan are my favourite. […] These yokan were particularly pleasant to look at, for their green-tinged lustre made them look as though they were precious stones, or as though they had been fashioned from alabaster.

   • 2007 winter, Elisa Herr, “A Sweet Tradition”, in Japan Info, volume 9, New York, N.Y.: Japan Information Center, Consolate General of Japan, →OCLC, page 8, columns 1–2:

     There are hundreds of distinct variations within the main types of wagashi: namagashi, monaka, yokan, manju, and higashi. […] Yokan gets its firm texture from kanten, a seaweed-derived gelatin, and is likely to have fruit and azuki within.

   • 2008, Gail Tsukiyama, The Samurai's Garden, page 61:

     “Homemade yokan. You must be quite special to this girl,” he teased. “She's just one of many,” I laughed. Matsu picked up one of the rectangular red bean cakes and put it entirely into his mouth.

   • 2019 November 4, Florence Fabricant, “A Japanese Sweet Tradition a Thousand Years in the Making”, in The New York Times‎^[1], New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 4 November 2019:

     Bill Yosses, the pastry chef, is now making yokan “pops” ($5) in several flavors at his Palais restaurant on the Upper East Side; Dylan Lauren also sells them at Dylan’s Candy Bar near Union Square. She said she liked the way the pops made yokan fun.

• yak on

yokan

1. bee; honeybee