Part 5/8:
The mid-20th century brought substantial changes to China's culinary landscape, often perceived as detrimental during the communist revolution. In the early 1950s, the Food, Beverage, and Hospitality Bureau commissioned a project to document local cuisines in China. Chen Mapo, being a long-standing institution, contributed to this documentation, leading to the first written recipe for Mapo Tofu; it notably emphasized a meat-heavy composition, using two parts tofu to one part minced beef.