동아시아에서 두부의 기원, 진화, 확산

Abstract

This article examines the historical process of tofu’s invention in China and its dissemination in East Asia in terms of beginning, evolution, and diffusion. Chinese studies today often attribute the invention of tofu to Liu An 劉安(179-122 BC) the King of Huainan, but this is not a historically verified fact and is based largely on popular legends. I maintain that the invention of tofu was inspired by cheese making when the pastoralists of the north and the agrarian farmers of the south began frequent exchange of culinary skills during the eighth to tenth centuries. Tofu was made in soft, uncurdled forms in the early years of its evolution and gradually progressed into firm, curdled forms. Methods of tofu making as introduced in the Chinese Bencao gangmu 本草綱目 and Korean San’ga yorok 山家要錄, as well, did not use compression and thus made soft tofu. It is highly likely that soft and firm tofu coexisted in China and Korea as late as the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It was after the seventeenth century when molded tofu spread widely, as tofu manufacturing developed. The crucial drive behind the dissemination of tofu to various East Asian regions was Buddhism. In Edo Japan (1603-1867) various tofu making was conceived along with the strict prohibition of meat-eating diet. Generally speaking, there are more recipes for cooking tofu-ranging from the regular kind to the fermented kind (called choutofu ‘stinky tofu’)-with other foods into various tofu plates, whereas in Japan developed more ways to make tofu with other additives and ingredients into blended tofu. Koreans tend to prefer eating tofu itself to cooking it with other recipes or modifying it into different kinds. The era of ‘industrial tofu’ came with the globalization of Japanese food that started in the nineteenth century.