Sujeonggwa수정과

Today sujeonggwa (수정과) means a drink of ginger and cinnamon water with dried persimmons floating in it, but the name 水正果 once covered a whole family of fruit punches served in liquid. An old cookbook, Gunhak Hoedeung, divides jeonggwa (fruit confections) into "wet" sujeonggwa and "dry" geonjeonggwa, and lists a dried-persimmon sujeonggwa and a mixed-fruit version made with pear and yuja. The name sujeonggwa first appears in Sujak Uigwe, a royal record from 1765, the 41st year of King Yeongjo. Even within Wonhaeng Eulmyo Jeongni Uigwe, the sujeonggwa recipes vary, using pear, yuja, pomegranate, black pepper or dried persimmon. It was originally sweetened with honey; today sugar is the norm.

Sujeonggwa was a winter drink, enjoyed alongside sikhye from the time the persimmons had dried until the first and second lunar months. At Lunar New Year, families made plenty for guests who came to bow and offer greetings. Haedong Jukji, a book from the early modern period, tells a story that Goryeo palace ladies used to drop dried persimmons into ginger water on New Year's Day, and that the custom spread to every household and became sujeonggwa. The same book carries a poem in which the poet counts the cups of sujeonggwa drunk over the years, one each New Year, and finds they add up to sixty-five, a gentle way of counting one's age.