A landlocked prefecture with abalone for its delicacy takes some explaining. The explanation is transport. Abalone taken from Suruga Bay was cooked, packed into wooden barrels of soy sauce, and carried over the passes on horseback into the Kofu basin.

The journey took days. A horse is warm, and a barrel riding against its flank stays warm too, so the shellfish sat in soy sauce at something like blood heat, rocking, for as long as the crossing lasted. By the time it reached Kofu the seasoning had gone right through it, and the thing was better than it had been when it left the coast.

That is the story, and whether or not the warmth of any particular horse did the work, the method stayed. It is sliced thin, with the liver cut into small pieces alongside it, and served with shiso leaves or slivers of cucumber. The texture is firm and resistant; the soy and the smell of the wood turn up a moment after the chewing starts.

Most of it now is bought as a gift rather than as dinner, which fits. This is a place that has spent several centuries making something out of the fact that it is a long way from the sea, and a boxed sea creature is precisely the form that takes.