Tofu first appeared in the Han Dynasty and was invented by Liu An, the king of Huainan.

In BC 164, Liu An was made King of Huainan, with Shouchun as its capital (now the chengguan of Shouxian County, Anhui Province).

Liu An has been thinking about how to live forever. He did not hesitate to recruit thousands of alchemists, talked about immortals on today's Bagong Mountain and wrote an alchemy. They grind bean juice with clear spring water in the mountains, and then cultivate Danmiao with bean juice. Unexpectedly, the elixir of life was not refined. On the contrary, bean juice reacts with gypsum and salt to form a fresh and smooth Dongdong, which is the embryonic form of tofu.

Someone got up the courage to taste some, and it was delicious. After Liu An heard about it, he tried repeatedly with the alchemists and finally solidified the soybean milk. They gave this thing a nice name-fermented soybean milk, which was later renamed "tofu". Since then, tofu has been widely circulated among the people, and Liu An has inadvertently become the originator of tofu. ?

In Yuan Dynasty, Ray Wu wrote in Japanese Herbs: "The method of tofu began with Liu An, the king of Han Huai", and Li Shizhen's Compendium of Materia Medica also recorded this statement. In addition, the scene of making tofu on the stone reliefs in the modern unearthed Han tomb site proves that this view is also valid.

Extended data

Tofu spread to other countries;

In Tianbao 12 (AD 754), Jian Zhen traveled to Japan and brought the method of making tofu to Japan. It is said that some Japanese tofu packaging bags now have the words "Tang Chuan dried tofu Huangbaishan Imperial Huainan Hall".

Tofu was introduced to Korea in Song Dynasty, and it was not introduced to Europe, Africa and North America until 19 century. Tofu has become one of the main foods in Vietnam, Thailand, South Korea, Japan and other countries.

Domingo Fernandez de navarrete (1665), a Dominican, first introduced to Europeans a kind of food-tofu, which was eaten by emperor China and ordinary people, and introduced the method of making tofu.

In the mid-20th century, western countries were not familiar with tofu. With the cultural exchange between China and the West, vegetarian food and healthy food became more and more important, and tofu was widely eaten in the West at the end of the 20th century.

For more than two thousand years, with the cultural exchange between China and foreign countries, tofu has spread not only all over the country, but also all over the world. It is as famous in the world as China's tea, porcelain and silk. Nowadays, tofu can be bought in western Asian product markets, agricultural products markets, health food stores and large supermarkets.

People's Network-The origin of tofu: Huainan Wang mistakenly made tofu as an elixir.

Baidu encyclopedia-tofu