Night market
In the kitchen
How it’s prepared
Soybeans are soaked, ground, strained and boiled into soy milk, and a coagulant is stirred in while it is hot; left to rest, it sets into a single tender white mass. The usual coagulant is food-grade gypsum (calcium sulfate), though some makers use nigari (mostly magnesium chloride), glucono-delta-lactone (GDL) or agar. Unlike tofu, douhua uses little coagulant and is never pressed, so it keeps all of its water. Some old shops roast raw gypsum over charcoal first, and others mix a little sweet potato starch into powdered gypsum; every maker has a method.
It is served by shaving thin sheets off with a flat, shallow ladle into a bowl and pouring syrup over it (brown sugar, white sugar, or in winter a ginger syrup made with mature ginger). Then come the toppings. Peanuts stewed until soft are the classic, followed by tapioca pearls, red beans, mung beans, Job's tears, taro balls and grass jelly. Add ice in summer, or eat it hot in winter.
Origins
History and origins
Douhua and tofu share an origin: soy milk set with a coagulant. Folklore credits Liu An, a Han-dynasty prince of Huainan, who is said to have accidentally curdled soy milk with gypsum while pursuing an elixir of life. Some Ming-era writers give him the invention of tofu, but this is legend, not documented history. Across China, douhua is eaten differently: in the north, 豆腐腦 is usually savory, dressed with soy sauce and things like minced meat, pickled mustard stem or mushrooms; the southwest likes it spicy, and the south and Taiwan mostly serve it sweet.
The early history of Taiwanese douhua is thinly documented. One account, from a Taiwan News feature, says migrants from the Shantou area of Guangdong brought douhua to Taiwan after the war, and that early vendors who could not afford market stalls sold it from three-wheeled pedal or motorcycle carts before some opened shops; the claim rests mainly on that one feature, and little other documentation confirms it. A 2007 TVBS profile of a Tainan vendor fits the picture: born in Shantou, he came to Taiwan with the army, learned to make douhua from a fellow townsman after discharge, carried it on a shoulder pole for about ten years and bought a cart in 1970. That is one man's life story, though, and it does not show who first brought douhua to the island. Today some old shops that began as pushcarts have been open for more than half a century, and regional styles have developed: many Chiayi shops pour sweet soy milk over the pudding instead of syrup, some old southern shops use a thicker syrup, and some shops in Anping, Tainan, serve it with lemon.
