Tofu: A Culinary History

The surprising, spicy story of this globe-trotting vegetable protein staple.

To the untrained eye, there’s nothing as unexciting as tofu, normally regarded as a tasteless, beige, congealed mass of crushed, boiled soybeans. However, tofu more than stands up on its own. Reviled for decades as a vegetarian oddity, the brave, wobbly block has made a comeback. This global history of bean curd stretches from ancient creation myths and tomb paintings, via Chinese poetry and Japanese Buddhist cuisine, to deportations in Soviet Russia and struggles for power on the African continent. It describes the potentially non-Chinese roots of tofu, its myriad types, why ＂eating tofu＂ is an insult in Cantonese, and its environmental impact today.

Warning: this book actually makes tofu exciting. It’s anything but bland.

Russell Thomas is an author and journalist currently based in Tokyo. His writing has appeared in the Japan Times, the Guardian, and the South China Morning Post, among others.