The world is full of countless foods and ways of eating them. It’s impossible to keep track of them all. I was surprised to discover salty watermelons, just as other people were surprised by my preference of putting peanut butter on waffles.

Such an incident happened on 19 January when a Japanese test maker unknowingly confused thousands of university entrance exam students with a recipe for a meat sauce calling for a “delicious kimchi base.”

As the prospective students were challenging themselves to English listening comprehension questions, they listened to an instructor read How to Make Meat Sauce.  During this they would answer a series of multiple choice questions.

The speech touched upon phrases like “using a kimchi base is delicious”, which understandably confused the listeners of this typically Italian recipe. Confirming that the students weren’t hearing things, question 21 reads:

Without hearing the script, we’d hazard a guess that third option – carameling the onions then adding browned meat followed by tomatoes and kimchi – seems like the best method. But, by calling it a “kimchi base”, number one would have to be the correct answer… right?

One Twitter user decided to put the test to the test and make their own kimchi meat sauce pasta. After uploading a photo of it on Twitter its popularity skyrocketed, racking up around 16,000 retweets.

According to the maker “it’s by no means disgusting” but other commenters beg to differ saying, “just one bite is enough to make you stop eating.”

Never having had kimchi meat sauce before, it doesn’t seem like such a bad idea if the balance is right. In fact, condiment maker Moranbong has their own Kimchi Meat Sauce recipe which doesn’t look half-bad at all.

However, the Moranbong recipe makes no reference to a “kimchi base.” According to them you should cook the meat first and then add kimchi and onion. The tomato should be added last of the four. I’m going to be up all night thinking about that question now…

Source: Twitter @core2duoxeon, Eastward Highschool via Entabe (Japanese)