Zunda: Miyagi's Sweetened Edamame Paste, Explained

Zunda is a paste made from boiled edamame, mashed and sweetened with sugar, giving it a bright green color and a flavor that's nutty and mildly beany rather than purely sweet. It's most traditionally used as a coating for mochi rice cakes, known as zunda mochi, in place of the more common sweet red bean paste. The exact origin story is debated locally, some trace it to samurai-era Date clan cuisine, others to simpler farming-household roots, and either way it's now firmly identified with Sendai and Miyagi.

Beyond traditional zunda mochi, the paste has been adapted into a wide range of modern products: zunda milkshakes, zunda soft-serve, zunda-flavored sponge cake, and even zunda spread sold in jars for toast. It's become one of Miyagi's most recognizable souvenir flavors alongside sasakamaboko. The taste is genuinely distinctive rather than just green sweet bean paste, it has a grassy, fresh-soybean edge that's different from standard anko, and some visitors find it grows on them more with a second try than the first.