I started thinking about mochi because of @Tiara_Princess7’s mochi post and I have a hypothesis that there may be a common historical thread between mochi and potato candy that dates back to the sixteenth century when Jesuit missionaries from Germany made their way to China.

I know in modern times mochi is a predominantly Japanese confection; however the process of pounding mochi was pioneered in China as far back as 300 B.C.

That being said the Jesuit missionaries in the late 16th century may have picked up the technique, brought it to Germany, and due to lack of sweet short grain rice, applied the process to potato starch.

In addition to this information; the Amish in the United States (who like the Jesuit Missionaries, are a Christian religious sect) are of German descent (« Pennsylvania Dutch » is a misnomer based on Deutsch which is German for German).

I have the puzzle pieces to either make a connection OR conclusively prove there was none, not sure where to go from here but I thought it was something interesting that popped into mind and I thought it interesting enough to share.

The early rice cakes in China were also a savoury food, as in most places before sugar became widespread Same goes for fufu of course which you'd normally have with a stew or something.

So plain mochi has been around longer than the dessert mochi we normally see exported and because of colonialism Europe probably had widespread dessertmaking earlier than Asia did, but it wouldn't be surprising if it got independently invented a few times as sugar was available

That makes me wonder about Gnocchi and Marco Polo's travels to Asia. According to the sources I found, potato candy got really big during the Great Depression. So it maybe just be something the Amish came up with States side? Again just something that hit my brain randomly