Batter loosened with dashi goes into a cast-iron plate of hemispherical wells, a piece of octopus is dropped into each, and the balls are turned with a skewer until a thin skin forms. Inside they are left almost liquid. Exactly how liquid is the whole argument between one shop and the next.

In 1933 a stall in the Nishinari district of Osaka was making these with beef. Two years later a customer mentioned that in Akashi they put octopus in, and the owner changed the filling to octopus and egg. The name was fixed at the same moment. It is a short and unusually well-documented origin for a street food.

In Osaka they are a snack, though plenty of people eat them with rice as part of dinner. Household ownership of the iron plate is high enough that surveys bother to measure it, which says something about how the city thinks of the dish.

The sauce came after the war, when a thicker version of Worcestershire arrived. Older shops still send them out seasoned only with dashi and soy. Around Kobe and Himeji there are shops that hand you a bowl of broth to dip them in instead. Without the sauce you can actually taste the batter, which is, after all, most of what you are eating.