Before the war, soba shops in this town doubled as drinking places. You drank with a dish of simmered horsemeat and finished with cold soba in a bowl. That was the pattern.

One customer poured what was left of the horsemeat and its liquid over his soba at the end. It was good enough that other people asked for it, and it went on the menu, and that is where this dish comes from.

Then the war came and horses became hard to get hold of at all. What replaced them was the chicken every household kept, and not a young bird either but a laying hen at the end of its working life.

An old bird is tough to chew, and precisely because of that it gives up far more flavor into a pot. The bones are simmered slowly for the stock, which is finished sweet and salty. As for why it is served cold: chilled broth keeps the noodles from going soft and preserves the bite, and that is the reason the style settled where it did rather than any preference for cold food. The Yachi Nikusoba Association keeps it going among the town's shops. There are more than ten shops in the association, and no two of them make the same broth or cut the same noodle. Summer or winter, it comes cold.