Fish is ground to a paste, mixed with tofu and egg, then with sugar and the local sweet shochu, and deep-fried. In Kagoshima the name is not satsuma-age but tsukeage. The sweetness is the first thing you notice, and it is strong enough that nothing needs to be dipped or added.

Two explanations circulate. One traces the name to a fried fish cake of the Ryukyu islands, whose name is said to have shifted into tsukeage as it travelled north. The other credits a late-Edo lord of Satsuma with having it developed from existing methods of making fish cake. Both versions describe the same thing: something that arrived from outside and was rebuilt locally.

The coast here landed a great deal of horse mackerel and sardine. What could not be sold or eaten in time had to be kept somehow, and frying it in oil kept it. A method of preservation became a side dish, then a boxed souvenir sold at the airport. The name changes as it travels: what Kagoshima calls tsukeage is satsuma-age almost everywhere else.

Bought hot from the fryer, at the counter, the sweetness stands right up. It is not the same food cold, and anyone who has only met it in a supermarket has met a different thing.