Mapo Tofu

Mapo Tofu is a famous dish in Sichuan cuisine. Its history dates back to around 1860 in the Qing Dynasty. At that time, there was a market at Wanfu Bridge outside the northern city gate of Chengdu. Near the market lived a couple running a small inn. The wife, known as Chen Mapo, was a skillful cook, especially good at cooking tofu. She was so called because she had a pockmarked face as a result of smallpox in her childhood. Mapo literally refers to a lady with a pockmarked face. Every day many oil peddlers and other small businessmen passed by the inn. They would often stop for a quick meal there. They gave Mapo some beef and leftover oil to be braised together with tofu. The other ingredients Mapo added included: fermented soybeans, bean paste sauce, and dry hot pepper. When the dish was done, Mapo would sprinkle some numb pepper powder on it to make it smell good and taste numb and spicy. Gradually the inn’s business flourished because of Mapo’s tofu and many other guests did the same as the oil peddlers by bringing ingredients here. Later Mapo tofu was recorded in a book called The Overall View of Chengdu, which made it famous. Up till the 1920s the inn continued with its tradition of cooking Mapo Tofu upon provided oil, beef and tofu. During the anti-Japanese War in the 1930s, many immigrants came to Chengdu and the growing population led to the emergence of many restaurants. The inn began to offer a larger variety of food choice to attract more customers while Mapo Tofu remained its main dish. In the 1940s, the inn put on a signboard “Chen Style Mapo Tofu” as it began to focus on catering, and later moved this restaurant to downtown Chengdu. After the end of war, many immigrants returned home and spread the Chen Style Mapo Tofu throughout the country. In the following few decades it spread to other countries like Japan and Singapore and in the 1990s it was awarded the title of “China’s time-honored brand”. Now there are restaurants selling packaged sauce for cooking Mapo Tofu in many cities all over China.