tofu
dòufu · tōfu · dubu · tofu
Cultural layer
The Oxford Companion to Food (Alan Davidson, 1999)
William Shurtleff and Akiko Aoyagi, History of Tofu, a chapter from the unpublished manuscript History of Soybeans and Soyfoods, 1100 B.C. to the 1980s (Soyfoods Center, 2004; SoyInfo Center)
豆腐传统制作技艺（淮南八公山豆腐制作技艺）, the traditional tofu-making technique of Bagong Mountain, Huainan (中国非物质文化遗产网, national list, item Ⅷ-232, 2014, accessed 2026-10-16)
Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art (Shizuo Tsuji, 1980)
Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art (Shizuo Tsuji, 1980)
Real Korean Cooking (Maangchi / Emily Kim, 2015)
Route
PendingThe routes are written. They are not yet mapped.
This entry's cultural layer already names where it came from and how it moved. What it does not yet carry is that movement as structure: ordered waypoints with real coordinates, and a mechanism on each leg. Until it does, the layer stays an empty slot rather than a drawn line, because a map built from prose would be a guess with a projection under it.
1 of 409 entries carries a mapped route · nutmeg is the prototype
- Waypoints
Ordered places, each with its kind
- Coordinates
Real positions, with the gazetteer they came from
- Segments
From, to, and the mechanism that moved it
- Confidence
Documented, attributed or contested
- Summary
What the route argues, in a sentence
Rite
Tofu is what a Buddhist kitchen built instead of meat. Shojin ryori in Japan and zhai cooking in China developed it into the protein of a precept against killing, and temple kitchens in Kyoto still specialise in it. In Korean and Japanese practice a block of plain tofu is eaten by someone released from prison, to start clean. A food invented to avoid taking life is also the food of beginning again.
Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art (Shizuo Tsuji, 1980)
Names · co-equal, marked by how each one travelled
FoodwayPresent as a living food culture.
- dòufuEndonymMandarin · China
- tōfuEndonymJapanese · Japan
- dubuEndonymKorean · Korea
- tofuMarketEnglish (via Japanese) · global market
Connections
17 bonds · 16 sourcedPidan tofu, a dish of exactly two things.
Agedashi-dofu, deep-fried tofu in a dashi and soy sauce.
Relocated in Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art: deep-fried tofu, page 412. Hiyayakko is not in the book.
Sundubu jjigae, the spicy soft tofu stew, seasoned with gochugaru.
Confirmed in Real Korean Cooking: sundubu jjigae, page 90, made with gochugaru flakes.
Kimchi stew with tofu, and soft tofu stew made with kimchi.
Relocated in Real Korean Cooking: kimchi stew with tuna, page 104, and spicy soft tofu stew, page 90. Dubu kimchi is not in the book.
Doenjang jjigae.
Confirmed in Real Korean Cooking: soybean paste stew with dried anchovies, page 108.
Mapo doufu.
Read in Yan-Kit's Classic Chinese Cookbook, page 159, which calls it Pock-ma Bean Curd and gives it to the wife of the chef Ch'en Shen-fu in Ch'eng-tu; the cited Classic Food of China was not the book in hand.
Dubu with sesame oil; namul dressing.
Confirmed in Real Korean Cooking: panfried tofu with spicy seasoning sauce, page 155.
Agedashi-dofu, deep-fried tofu with grated ginger.
Relocated in Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art: deep-fried tofu, page 413. Hiyayakko is not in the book.
Miso soup and yudofu.
Confirmed in Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art: red miso soup, page 157, and simmering tofu, pages 436 to 437.
Yudofu, simmered in kombu water.
Confirmed in Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art: simmering tofu, pages 436 to 437.
Nabe and simmered dishes.
Confirmed in Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art: cod and cabbage casserole, page 432, and red miso soup, page 157.
Braised bean curd, the white scallions in at the start and the green at the end.
Relocated in Yan-Kit's Classic Chinese Cookbook, page 168, Bean Curd in a Simple Sauce, and page 159. There is no cold bean curd dish in this book; the cited Classic Food of China was not the book in hand.
Deep-fried five-spice rolls, the seasoned filling wrapped in bean curd sheets.
Relocated in Yan-Kit's Classic Chinese Cookbook, page 56, where the book says the powder lends the dish its name as well as its aroma. Pressed and simmered bean curd is not in this book; the cited Classic Food of China was not the book in hand.
Agedashi-dofu garnished with bonito, and the bonito sauce for yudofu.
Relocated in Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art: deep-fried tofu, page 413, and simmering tofu, page 437. Hiyayakko is not in the book.
Pepes tahu.
Doenjang jjigae, with gochujang stirred in as an option.
Read in Real Korean Cooking, page 108: gochujang may be added to the soybean paste stew with tofu. The spicy soft tofu stew, page 90, which the note named before, is made with gochugaru.
Bonds are drawn from culinary literature and origin-tradition references, tiered by source. Origin means a reference from the place. Witness means the pairing is the place's own and the reference documenting it was written from outside.
The score is cultural weight: how central a pairing is in the tradition that documents it. It is not a prediction of how two materials behave in a formulation and not a measure of chemical affinity. The scale is ordinal, because centrality is a judgement rather than a measurement: 1.0 where the pair is the dish, 0.9 a fixed named form, 0.8 a canonical dish, 0.7 recurrent across many dishes, 0.6 common, 0.5 attested, 0.4 marginal or compound-led.
Each score is set against a named dish and carries that dish in its note. Where a score has not been examined it says so, because an inherited figure and a researched one should not look alike.
The dish is named by a reader who knows the cuisine and cites a source appropriate to it. It has not yet been confirmed inside that source page by page, so a note records what supports a score rather than what has been checked in the book.
Studio Culinar-E, "tofu", Pantry Archive, Studio Monk-E, 2026. https://studioculinar-e.com/archive/tofu
/archive/tofu
Bonds are tiered by source, origin-tradition references first.