Tempeh is the only major traditional soy food that did not
originate in China or Japan. It originated in what is now
Indonesia, perhaps as long as 2,000 years ago on the island of
Java. At that time the people of Java, without formal training in
microbiology or chemistry, developed a family of fermented foods.
Besides cooked soybeans, they learned to make tempeh from oil-seed
presscakes (the protein-rich cakes left after pressing the oil from
seeds such as peanuts or coconuts) and okara (the soy pulp
remaining after making soy milk or tofu).
Before the Javanese learned to make tempeh, the Chinese were
making a similar product, the soybean koji for their soy sauce,
produced by inoculating cooked, de-hulled soybeans with wild molds
such as Aspergillus oryzae. Early traders could have brought this
method from China to Java. The Javanese could have modified it to
suit their own tastes, and used Rhizopus due to its better
adaptation to the Indonesian climate.
Soybeans may have been introduced to Indonesia at the time that
regular trade started with south China in about 1000 AD, although
one Sundanese (West Javan) name for soybeans is kachang jepun
(Japanese bean). Tempeh may have developed from an application to
soybeans of an earlier fermentation used to make coconut presscake
tempeh (tempeh bongkrek).
In 1603, the Dutch East India Company was formed, and Indonesia
came under the influence of the Dutch. The Serat Centini, a
Javanese story set in the reign of Sultan Agung (1613-45), tells of
the adventures of students wandering in the Javanese countryside in
search of truth. The story gives detailed information on many
subjects of Javanese culture and life. In a description of a
reception at Wanamarta, a prosperous place, it mentions "onions and
uncooked témpé," without giving any further description.
Dutch botanist Georg Eberhard Rumphius reported in 1747 that
soybeans were being used in Java for food and as green manure.
Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg discovered and named the fungi
genus Rhizopus in 1820. The earliest known reference to tempeh
(actually témpé) in Indonesia by a European appeared in 1875 in a
Javanese-Dutch dictionary. In 1895 the Dutch microbiologist and
chemist H.C Prinsen Geerligs made the first attempt to identify the
tempeh mold. A year later, when this article was published in
German, he identified the name of the mold as Rhizopus oryzae and
he identified the product as tempeh.
The oldest method for making tempeh inoculum was the sandwiched
hibiscus leaf method, in which inoculated soybeans were sandwiched
between hibiscus leaves and incubated until the molds produced
spores. The finished inoculum was known as laru, waru, or usar. The
spores on the leaves were rubbed over warm soybeans to inoculate
them.
Tempeh's popularity in West Java (where the culture is
Sundanese), and its spread to other Indonesian islands and other
countries of the world, probably began in the 20th century. In 1900
Dr. P.A. Boorsma, a Dutch resident of Java, published a 13-page
article on soybeans. In a detailed 4-page description of the
traditional process for making Tempe kedeleh, Boorsma reported that
the soybeans were parboiled, soaked in water for 2-3 days, drained,
steamed in a steamer, spread in a layer several centimeters thick
on woven bamboo trays in shelves, and covered completely with
banana leaves. They were then inoculated by mixing in
"mold-containing residues of a previous preparation" and covered
lightly with banana leaves. Boorsma then described the rise in
temperature to 10-12°C above ambient temperature during the tempeh
fermentation, and the likelihood that stories about non-soy tempehs
causing food poisoning were true.
In 1900 and 1901, German microbiologist Carl Wehmer studied
Javanese ragi (starter culture cakes, also called "Chinese yeast")
occasionally used for making tempeh. In 1902 Dutch physician
Adolphe Vorderman discussed in detail two processes he observed for
wrapping and fermenting soy tempeh. In the first and best-known way
the soybeans were incubated between banana leaves; in the second
the soybeans were wrapped in banana leaves to form a packet 20 cm
long and 7 cm wide, then wrapped in a jati leaf. The packets were
stacked in a bamboo basket for 24 hours covered with bags, then
removed to prevent overheating and spread on the floor for 24 hours
more.
In 1923, Dutch biochemist Barend Coenraad Petrus Jansen showed
that fermentation reduced the "anti-beriberi vitamin" (later named
vitamin B-1 or thiamine) in tempeh.
In 1931, Dutch botanist Jacob Jonas Ochse published Vegetables
of the Dutch East Indies, a 1005-page book, in Java. The
English-language book described the tempeh-making process in
detail, including the fact that the mold used was Rhizopus oryzae,
and that it was obtained from a former batch of tempeh. In 1932 and
1935, Dutch microbiologist Dr. Andre G. van Veen further
investigated the content of thiamine and riboflavin in tempeh and
found it to be a good source of both. In 1935, British botanist
Isaac Henry Burkill published A Dictionary of the Economic Products
of the Malay Peninsula, a two-volume, 2,400-page work, in England.
It contained six pages of information about tempeh and other soy
foods, including a description of the tempeh-making process. In
1936, biologist Dr. Lewis B. Lockwood and his co-workers studied
the physiology of R. oryzae at the USDA Northern Regional Research
Center (NRRC) at Peoria, Illinois.
During World War II most of the Malay archipelago was occupied
by Japan. In New Guinea, tempeh production stopped and the local
New Guinea starter cultures were all lost. Tempeh was served as an
important food in other parts of the archipelago during the war,
both for the native population and for foreigners in Japanese
prisoner of war (POW) camps there. Dutch botanist P. A. Roelofsen
was a POW in Japanese camps in Indonesia, where many Europeans were
starving on a sparse diet of corn, sweet potatoes, chilies, and
soybeans. Roelofsen made the soybeans into tempeh using pulverized
dried tempeh as an inoculum. Andre van Veen was also a POW in
Indonesian camps where tempeh was widely served.
In 1946, van Veen reported that even POWs suffering from
dysentery and edema, who could not digest cooked whole soybeans,
were able to digest tempeh. Fuel was sometimes so scarce in the
camps that the soybeans, served as whole beans or used for tempeh,
were inadequately cooked. The tempeh process helped to make these
under-cooked soybeans much more digestible. Van Veen concluded that
many POWs owed their survival to tempeh. That same year, Roelofsen
also reported the important role of tempeh in reducing deaths in
the camps. Also in 1946, Swiss plant pathologist Gerold Stahel,
director of the Agricultural Experiment Station in Paramaribo,
Suriname, a Dutch colony in South America, wrote an article about
tempeh in Suriname and in New Guinea, which was published in the
Journal of the New York Botanical Garden. A summary appeared in
November of that year in Soybean Digest. Stahel described how,
during World War II, the United States shipped soybeans to New
Guinea in order to feed the Europeans and Indonesians living there.
Indonesians, accustomed to eating fermented soy foods, considered
plain cooked soybeans to be unpalatable. Stahel, asked to furnish
new starter cultures from Suriname, sent both fresh tempeh cakes
and pure-culture starters to the Netherlands Indies Civil
Administration (NICA) in New Guinea. NICA kitchens all over the
territory started using the US soybeans to make tempeh. In April of
that year, a Dutch couple founded a tempeh company called Eerste
Nederlandse Tempe Industrie (ENTI) in Holland. While living in
Indonesia, they had learned to make tempeh. Bringing their starter
culture and recipe to the Netherlands, they began to make Europe's
earliest known tempeh there on a home scale for friends and
relatives. Gradually ENTI grew and became a commercial
operation.
The Dutch people who settled in Indonesia during colonial times
were overwhelmingly male, and many of these Dutch men married
Indonesian women. This created a new group of people, the
Dutch-Eurasians (Indische Nederlanders), also known as
Indo-Europeans or Indos. The Chinese population also grew rapidly
during the colonial period when workers were contracted from their
home provinces in southern China. During the four-year revolution
that led to Indonesian independence in 1949, tens of thousands of
Dutch, Indo, and Chinese families fled the country. Many of the
Indos did not want to emigrate to Holland, which was much colder
than Indonesia, and many of the Chinese did not want to live in a
newly Communist China.
In 1950, the United States set a quota allowing 25,000 refugees
to immigrate from Indonesia. Only about 10% were culturally native
Indonesian; the rest were Dutch-Indonesians or Chinese-Indonesians.
Most went to warm states such as Florida, with an estimated 500
arriving in California in 1950. That same year, Andre van Veen and
G. Schaefer published first study in English on the chemical and
microbiological changes occurring during tempeh fermentation. Their
paper, based partly on van Veen's experiences in the POW camp,
described the tempeh-making process, and attempted to show why
tempeh was so much more digestible than soybeans. Also in 1950
Dutch botanist Pieter Merkus Lambertus Tammes published a detailed
description of how tempeh was made in Java, including a description
of how tempeh starter (ragi) was made.
In 1951 Dean A. Smith and Michael F. A. Woodruff wrote
"Deficiency Diseases in Japanese Prison Camps." They reported that
the POWs in had made soybeans (often inadequately cooked) into
tempeh to make them more palatable and digestible. They also
reported that prisoners in Japanese camps in Indonesia during World
War II obtained their original tempeh mold culture from the
withered petals of the hibiscus plant. M. W. Grant published a
similar article in Nature in 1952.
Dr. Paul György, a pediatrician and researcher at Philadelphia
General Hospital, and Professor of Pediatrics at the University of
Pennsylvania, had been to Indonesia many times, knew tempeh well,
and (like Marcel Autret and Andre van Veen) thought that it could
improve the diets of infants and children in developing countries.
György received his first tempeh from Indonesia in 1954.
In 1955 Marcel Autret and Andre van Veen, both working for the
Nutrition Division of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the
United Nations, outside the US, published "Possible Sources of
Proteins for Child Feeding in Underdeveloped Countries" in the
American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. They were the first to
suggest tempeh as a protein-rich, nutritious, and low-cost food for
infants and children in developing countries. They mentioned tempeh
only briefly and noted that soy milk would probably be better
suited for feeding children.
In 1958, Dutch botanist Karel Bernard Boedijn reported that R.
oligosporus could always be isolated from tempeh, implying that it
was the primary fermentation organism.
Yap Bwee Hwa, an Indonesian biochemist of Chinese descent whose
name comes from the Hokkian dialect of Fujian province, worked in
Jakarta at the Nutrition Institute under Dr. Poorwo Sudarmo, a
physician interested in nutritious, low-cost foods for infants. Yap
won a Fulbright scholarship to the US and Sudarmo encouraged her to
study tempeh. After reading the article by van Veen on the value of
tempeh in POW camps, she made up her mind. The Fulbright committee
suggested that Yap study at Cornell University, so she wrote to Dr.
David B. Hand, head of the Department of Food Science and
Technology at Cornell's New York State Agricultural Experiment
Station in Geneva, New York. She visited tempeh plants in Indonesia
to study the process, collected tempeh from the Jakarta market,
then dried it and put it in a bottle for later use as tempeh
starter. Yap left Indonesia for the US in August 1957. In the
summer of 1958 she started to work in Dr. Keith H. Steinkraus'
laboratory at Geneva, where she prepared what was probably the
first tempeh ever made in America. Yap pursued her study of tempeh
as a nutritious food for infants and children, in part because of
the high rate of infant mortality in Indonesia caused by
malnutrition.
In early 1959 Dr.Keith Steinkraus, while on a trip to check the
UNICEF-supported Saridele soy milk plant in Indonesia, visited a
number of tempeh shops, becoming the first American to study tempeh
in its homeland. Also in 1959 Steinkraus' Cornell University group
began making tempeh for Dr. György in Pennsylvania. Following
mostly futile attempts to make tempeh in his own laboratory and
lacking adequate facilities for making larger quantities of it,
György arranged to have the tempeh made under the supervision of
Dr. Hand and Dr. Steinkraus in Geneva, New York. Japanese
nutritionist Dr. Kiku Murata worked with György in the US
investigating tempeh during 1959 and 1960.
Ko Swan Djien began his studies at the University of Wisconsin
at Madison in August 1959. Like Yap Bwee Hwa, he was an Indonesian
of Chinese descent whose name comes from the Hokkian dialect of
Fujian province. In September 1959 Steinkraus, Yap, Hand, and their
colleagues submitted "Studies on Tempeh-An Indonesian Fermented
Food," which incorporated Yap's tempeh research, plus additional
investigations by Steinkraus' group on essential microorganisms,
and mycelial penetration of the soybeans.
In June 1960 Yap, as part of her graduate degree in nutrition,
submitted her MS thesis titled "Nutritional and Chemical Studies on
Tempeh, an Indonesian Soybean Product." Innovations in tempeh
production described in her paper included using lactic acid to
acidify the soybean soak water, incubating the tempeh in stainless
steel trays, dehulling the soybeans mechanically, growing the
starter spores on bran, and dehydrating the tempeh in a circulating
hot air oven. Also in 1960, a second US tempeh research program was
started under the direction of Dr. Clifford W. Hesseltine at the
USDA NRRC. Ko Swan Djien arrived at the NRRC in February of that
year to study industrial fermentation. Hesseltine suggested that he
study tempeh; Ko showed Hesseltine and his group how to prepare
it.
In 1961 Ko and Hesseltine authored an article titled "Indonesian
Fermented Foods." It contained detailed information about tempeh
making and recipes in Indonesia. Ko noted that there were thousands
of tempeh shops in Indonesia and estimated that half or more of the
country's soybean production was used to make tempeh. That same
year, György wrote "The Nutritive Value of Tempeh." He gradually
moved his research away from a focus on child feeding programs
toward the more narrow study of antioxidants in tempeh, which might
prevent rancidity of tempeh or other foods.
The first immigrant from Indonesia to start a tempeh shop in the
U.S. was Mary Otten, who in 1961 began making tempeh in her
basement on Stannage Avenue in Albany, California. She sold it to
her friends and served it at parties that she catered. For starter
culture she used ragi (an Indonesian starter that comes in small
cakes) flown in from Java, until she learned how to make her own 12
years later.
In 1962 Hesseltine published "Research at Northern Regional
Research Laboratory on Fermented Foods." That same year, after
observing 50 strains of tempeh mold from various sources,
Hesseltine identified R. oligosporus as the primary tempeh
mold.
In 1963 Hesseltine and co-workers published their first major
tempeh study "Investigations of Tempeh, an Indonesian Food." That
same year they discovered a mold inhibitor in soybeans.
In 1964 Dr. Alcides Martinelli, a Brazilian scientist studying
tempeh at the NRRC, and Hesseltine developed a new method for
incubating tempeh in perforated plastic bags. It soon became widely
used by commercial tempeh producers in both Indonesia and North
America. In the same paper they described fermenting tempeh in
metal and wooden trays, dry de-hulling soybeans, and preparing
tempeh from full-fat soy grits. In May 1964, Ko Swan Djien
presented an article at the International Symposium on Oilseed
Proteins in Tokyo, discussing tempeh's history, traditional
production methods, inoculum, packaging, chemistry, microbiology,
contamination, shelf life, recipes, and price. He also described a
tempeh pilot plant being developed in Bandung with a mechanical
roller-mill de-huller, water flotation hull removal, heated
incubator and trays, and improved inocula, and referred to the use
of okara (soy pulp) in tempeh. That year, Ko also described an
improved soybean-based starter.
Until the mid-1960s many microbiologists thought R. oryzae was
the primary microorganism responsible for the tempeh fermentation.
In 1965, a summary of Ko's work on tempeh was published in
Indonesian; it included details of a survey of 81 samples of tempeh
from various places in Java and Sumatra. Isolation of 116 pure
cultures revealed that R. oligosporus was always present in
good-quality tempeh, establishing that it was the dominant species
used. Indonesian researchers, however, maintain that the best
quality tempeh contains a mixed culture.
In 1966 and 1967 Hesseltine and Dr. Hwa-Li Wang published
studies showing that tempeh could be prepared using soy-and-grain
mixtures (including wheat and rice) or cereal grains alone. In 1967
the Indonesian Department of Agriculture published Mustika Rasa
("Gems of Taste"), a 1,123-page cookbook containing 35 Indonesian
tempeh recipes. Also in 1967 several types of tempeh were included
in the official Indonesian Food Composition Tables. That same year,
Mary Otten started Java Restaurant in California and served many
tempeh dishes.
In 1967 and 1968, Ko Swan Djien developed and tested an inoculum
based on cooked rice, incubated in aluminum trays, then dried,
pulverized, and stored it sealed in a cool place. The process
required no sophisticated equipment. In 1968 Ko joined the
Department of Food Science at the Agricultural University,
Wageningen, in the Netherlands, where he began to stimulate new
interest in tempeh in Europe.
In 1969 Dr. Hwa-Li Wang and her co-workers discovered that
Rhizopus oligosporus in tempeh produces an antibacterial compound
or antibiotic, which is active against a number of Gram-positive
bacteria, including Staphylococcus aureus and Bacillus subtilis,
and which retains this property even after cooking. This supported
the view of Indonesians and of some scientists that people who eat
tempeh daily have fewer intestinal infections.
Starting in the late 1960s and early 1970s a number of changes
began to take place in the process for making tempeh in Indonesia.
The most noticeable of these was the use of polyethylene bags (and,
to a more limited extent, wooden trays lined with plastic sheeting)
in place of banana leaves as the container in which the tempeh was
incubated and sold. These were techniques developed by Martinelli
and Hesseltine at the USDA NRRC in Peoria, Illinois.
Nasruddin Iljas wrote his MS theses on tempeh at Ohio State
University in 1969. In 1970 he published a short article with
colleagues at Ohio State on ways of preserving tempeh. In 1970
Dakimah Dwidjoseputra wrote his PhD dissertation on the
microbiology of ragi (tempeh starter) at Vanderbilt University in
Tennessee. That same year, Dwidjoseputra and Vanderbilt biology
professor Frederick Taylor Wolf studied the microorganisms in
tempeh inocula.
In 1971, Dr. Mahmud Hermana and Digiteng Roedjito were the first
to publish a method for the use of steamed rice (plus cassava and
soy flour) as a tempeh inoculum substrate. Also in 1971, Hesseltine
and Wang sent samples of their tempeh to Dr. Doris Calloway at the
University of California, Berkeley. She found that tempeh, unlike
most foods made from beans, does not cause flatulence. Thio Goan
Loo, an Indonesian of Chinese descent, introduced tempeh and other
soy foods to Zambia that same year. Later that year, Alexander
Lyon, a member of The Farm, a large spiritual and farming community
on 1,700 acres in Summertown, Tennessee, learned about tempeh while
doing library research on soy-based weaning foods.
In 1972, Lyon, who had a PhD in biochemistry, helped The Farm to
set up a small "soy dairy." While serving as its first manager, and
using starter culture and literature supplied by Drs. Hesseltine
and Wang, he worked with Dianne Darling to make an occasional small
batch of tempeh for the soy dairy crew. Dianne wrote a ten-step
kitchen method for making tempeh using spore suspension for
inoculum. Soon Deborah Flowers made two large batches of tempeh,
incubated in the boiler room at the Canning and Freezing plant, and
many Farm members had their first taste. The group developed a
method for growing tempeh starter on chopped, sterilized sweet
potatoes with cultures in test tubes. Tempeh was an immediate hit
in The Farm's vegan diet. That same year, Hesseltine and Wang
reported that bulgur wheat was mixed with soybeans to make
tempeh.
In 1974, Mary Otten and her daughter, Irene, started Otten's
Indonesian Foods. That same year, Simon Rusmin and Ko Swan Djien
wrote an article on rice-grown tempeh inoculum and Ko showed that
the tempeh mold prevented aflatoxin production by Aspergillus
flavus. Also in 1974, Cynthia Bates joined the Soy Dairy crew at
The Farm and learned the basic lab techniques for making tempeh
starter from Alexander. She built a tempeh incubator out of an old
refrigerator and by November 1974 was making 20-30 pound batches of
okara tempeh, using the soy pulp (okara) left over after making
soymilk.
By the mid-1970s, some larger manufacturers began to use a
prepared, rice-based tempeh inoculum; a key supplier was the
Department of Microbiology at Bandung Institute of Technology.
Tempeh was known in even the most remote rural areas throughout
most of Java, where it is served in a wide variety of popular
dishes. By the mid-1970s it was being made from at least 17
indigenous seeds and presscakes by more than 41,000 shops, using
simple, traditional methods. In Indonesia the great majority of all
tempeh was soy tempeh (témpé kedelé) and by the mid-1970s it
constituted an estimated 90% of all tempeh produced. Well-known
varieties of soy tempeh included thick Malang tempeh and
one-bean-thick Purwokerto tempeh. Other traditional types of tempeh
included: okara tempeh (tempe gembus or onchom hitau),
soybean-hulls tempeh (tempe mata kedele), peanut presscake tempeh
(onchom hitam), the occasionally poisonous coconut presscake tempeh
(tempe bongkrek), velvet-bean tempeh (tempe benguk), leucaena
tempeh (tempe lamtoro), mung bean tempeh (tempe kacang hijau), mung
bean pulp tempeh, plus several other minor varieties. The okara
tempeh, presscake tempehs, and other non-soy tempehs were consumed
more by lower-income people.
By January 1975, The Farm Tempeh Shop was making 80-200 pounds
of tempeh a week. The incubator was expanded into a used bean dryer
and sporulated okara tempeh (dried and ground) began to be used as
a starter. That year, the 1,100-member community featured a section
on tempeh (written by Cynthia Bates) in their widely read Farm
Vegetarian Cookbook, including the first tempeh recipes to be
published in any European language. After Wang, Swain, and
Hesseltine at the NRRC published their paper on mass production of
tempeh spores, Bates set up a little laboratory and began making
tempeh starter for use on The Farm. The starter was grown on rice,
using the syringe inoculation technique and a spore suspension of
starter sent periodically by Dr. Wang. In the spring of 1975 the
R&D department at Rodale Press in Emmaus, Pennsylvania, decided
to follow up on the work with tempeh done by Hesseltine and Wang at
Peoria. That same year, Slamet Sudarmadji wrote his PhD
dissertation on tempeh at Michigan State University. He found that
the phytic acid in soybeans (which can bind dietary minerals) was
significantly reduced during the tempeh fermentation. William
Shurtleff and Akiko Aoyagi, in their Book of Tofu (1975), included
a recipe for homemade tempeh and seven Indonesian-style tempeh
recipes.
The first commercial tempeh shop owned by a native-born American
was started in the winter of 1975 by Gale Randall in Unadilla,
Nebraska. The former high school teacher had retired four years
previously and moved his family to the farm in Unadilla where he
had grown up. He read about tempeh in several magazines, and he
contacted Dr. Wang at the USDA NRRC in Peoria for starter and
instructions. Randall made tempeh for his family for most of the
year, then built a tempeh shop in the basement of his home and
began selling the product commercially. At night he worked in the
post office in Lincoln.
In early 1976, Rodale's R&D food technologist Mark Schwartz
began to work with Dr. Wang in Peoria to develop a simple,
inexpensive way to make tempeh at home. They devised a tempeh kit
including an incubator made from an Styrofoam cooler heated by a
light bulb. They sent the kit with instructions and a questionnaire
to 60 readers across the country, who found the new food easy to
make and delicious. In March 1976 Brenda Bortz in "The Joys of Soy"
introduced tempeh and Rodale's tempeh research to readers of
Organic Gardening. In May 1976 Mother Earth News ran a long excerpt
on tempeh from The Book of Tofu by Shurtleff and Aoyagi. That
article and others listed the USDA NRRC at Peoria as America's only
source of tempeh starter. Over the next few years the Peoria group
sent out some 25,000 tempeh starter cultures and instructions for
making tempeh, free of charge to people and organizations
requesting them. That same year, Cynthia Bates began making and
selling powdered pure-culture tempeh starter from the Tempeh Lab.
Alexander Lyon typed up a three-page flyer called "Tempeh
Instructions," which contained the first instructions in any
European language for making tempeh at home, and listed The Farm as
a source of tempeh starter. Bates wrote and The Farm printed a
2-page flyer titled "Tempe," which described how to make five
pounds of tempeh and contained four recipes, including the world's
first Tempeh Burger recipe. This flyer was distributed with the
starter. Bates and co-workers wrote a 20-page article titled
"Beatnik Tempeh Making" (later retitled "Utilization of Tempeh in
North America") for the Symposium on Indigenous Fermented Foods in
Bangkok. The Farm's satellite farms established commercial tempeh
shops in San Rafael, California, and Houma, Louisiana. America's
first soy deli, set up in August 1976 at the Farm Food Company's
storefront restaurant in San Rafael, featured tempeh in Tempeh
Burgers, Deep-fried Tempeh Cutlets, and Tempeh with Creamy Tofu
Topping, the first tempeh dishes sold in an American-style
restaurant. In late 1976, during a two-week visit to The Farm,
Shurtleff and Aoyagi wrote (with Bates) a 4-page pamphlet titled
"What is Tempeh?" which they enlarged and published in early
1977.
In January 1977 Organic Gardening published "Tempeh Keeps 'em
Coming for More Soybeans." Jack Ruttle, a Rodale staffer,
summarized the results of Rodale's research on tempeh to date and
gave detailed instructions for making tempeh at home. The article
listed The Farm as the only known source of split, hulled soybeans.
Orders began to arrive. Soon Dr. Wang at the NRRC in Peoria,
flooded by orders for tempeh starter, was forwarding many of them
to The Farm. In June Prevention, the largest health magazine in
America, ran a cover story and editorial by Robert Rodale titled
"Tempeh, a New Health Food Opportunity." He visited Gale Randall's
tempeh shop, encouraged others to start tempeh shops and to "get in
on the ground floor of a new industry." The article brought Randall
and his shop instant fame. He eventually developed a diverse line
of tempeh products but conservative Nebraskans were slow to accept
them. Also in June, Organic Gardening (circulation 1,350,000)
published Shurtleff and Aoyagi's "Favorite Tempeh Recipes" and
Wang, Swain, and Hesseltine's "Calling all Tempeh Lovers,"
describing an easy method for making this rice-based tempeh starter
at home. In September Mother Earth News featured "How We Make and
Eat Tempeh Down on the Farm," by Cynthia Bates and Deborah Flowers,
and in November Vegetarian Times published "Tempeh." The Mother
Earth News article led to a surge of orders for both starter and
split soy beans. On 21 September 1977, macrobiotic pioneer Michio
Kushi, speaking in Washington D.C. to the President's committee on
food policy, recommended the use of traditional, naturally
fermented soy foods such as soy sauce, miso, and tempeh. By 1977
the Farm community, with Suzie Jenkins as head tempeh maker, was
producing at least 60 pounds of tempeh a day, and they were using a
centrifuge to dry the soybeans after cooking and before
inoculation, a technological breakthrough that soon caught on among
commercial tempeh makers. That same year, Farm Foods was founded;
it took over marketing of the tempeh starter, together with hulled
soybeans and revised editions of the tempeh instructions. The three
items were sold nationwide as America's first Tempeh Kit by mail
order and in some natural food stores. The starter was also sold
separately with the leaflet. Steinkraus organized a Symposium on
Indigenous Fermented Foods, held in Bangkok, Thailand, in November
1977 in conjunction with the fifth United Nations-sponsored
conference on the Global Impacts of Applied Microbiology (GIAM V),
and attended by over 450 scientists from around the world. There 17
papers were presented on tempeh, more than any other single food.
That same year, Lindayati Tanuwidjaja studied the fortification of
low-cost presscake tempehs with soy flour to improve the diets of
the very poor. Also in 1977, Steinkraus and his colleages showed
tempeh to be one of the best vegetarian sources of vitamin B-12,
which was produced by the bacterium Klebsiella. (Nutritional
analyses of commercial tempeh done by independent scientific
laboratories showed that typical samples contained an average of
8.8 micrograms of vitamin B-12 per 100 gram portion, or 293% of the
US Recommended Daily Allowance of 3 micrograms.)
During 1978 Farm Foods promoted its tempeh starter and tempeh
kit by serving grilled tempeh at numerous natural foods trade
shows. The February 1978 issue of Organic Gardening magazine listed
Farm Foods as the best source of tempeh starter and split beans,
which stimulated sales. In July 1978 East West Journal ran its
first tempeh story, "Make Your Own Soyburger" about the Farm's
tempeh. Also in 1978, Louise Hagler edited a revised edition of the
Farm Vegetarian Cookbook that contained 12 pages on tempeh,
including many recipes.
By early 1979 there were 13 tempeh shops in the US, one in
Canada, and four in the Netherlands. Prior to 1979 tempeh had been
available on The Farm only on special occasions. In that year,
however, a Tempeh Trailer, developed in Louisiana by John and
Charlotte Gabriel, was brought to The Farm. The tempeh incubator
was moved out of the Canning and Freezing building and made into a
walk-in incubation room in the trailer. John Pielascyzk became head
tempeh maker, and thereafter any Farm member could go at almost any
time to the Farm store, open the freezer, and take home tempeh. In
July 1979 Harper & Row published Book of Tempeh by Shurtleff
and Aoyagi, the first book in the world devoted entirely on tempeh.
It contained 130 American-style and Indonesian tempeh recipes. That
same month, Michael Cohen (who had formerly lived on The Farm) made
his first tempeh at The Tempeh Works in Greenfield, Massachusetts,
a remodeled gas station with 1,200 square feet of floor space.
Their tempeh was served at the annual Soyfoods Conference at
Amherst. The company began regular commercial production in
September. Also in 1979, Thio Goan Loo introduced tempeh to Sri
Lanka. That same year, Ko and Hesseltine wrote "Tempeh and Related
Foods."
In 1980 The Soy Plant in Ann Arbor, Michigan, developed Tempeh
of the Sea, containing sea vegetables such as hijiki, dulse, and
arame, which resembled fish sticks. In August 1980 Island Spring
near Seattle, Washington introduced the world's first commercial
tempeh burgers, made on a small scale in individual petri dishes.
By the end of its first year in September 1980, the Tempeh Works in
Massachusetts grew to be the biggest tempeh producer in America at
that time, reaching about 3,000 pounds per week. Cohen sold his
tempeh refrigerated rather than frozen, and he developed the first
effective steaming system to give such tempeh a long shelf life, 10
days in summer and 14-21 days in winter. By 1980 articles about The
Tempeh Works were published in regional and national magazines, and
the company ran ads for its tempeh to accompany many of these
articles.
In 1981 Margaret Nofziger, Farm nutritionist, wrote an article
on "Tempeh and Soy Yogurt," with five tempeh recipes, for
Vegetarian Times. By that time, Otten's Indonesian Foods in
California was making tempeh plus a full line of Indonesian
tempeh-based foods under the brand name Joy of Java. These foods
included Sweet & Sour Tempeh and Sayur Lodeh Tempeh. That same
year, Indian microbiologists I. M. David and Jitendra Verma
suggested that the antibacterial substance in tempeh might inhibit
the growth of gram-positive Clostridium bacteria, which are known
to produce gas in the intestines, and may be the reason tempeh
doesn't cause flatulence. In August 1981, East West Journal printed
Aveline Kushi's "My Favorite Tempeh Recipes." Aveline used tempeh
extensively in diets for cancer patients. People practicing a
macrobiotic diet increasingly used tempeh daily, and a number of
them started tempeh companies. Rodale Press published Ray Wolf's
Home Soyfood Equipment, which included a new method for making
tempeh at home using unsalted soynuts, which took less time and
cost only about 10 cents more per pound than the traditional
method. It also included detailed plans for making a home tempeh
incubator.
In March 1982, Organic Gardening summarized Wolf's quick tempeh
method. That year, Farm Foods began actively advertising and
selling bulk, powdered tempeh starter to America's growing number
of tempeh shops.
In 1983 Steinkraus edited the Handbook of Indigenous Fermented
Foods, containing 94 pages of information about tempeh, much of it
from the 1977 Symposium.
By 1984, Farm Foods had captured a majority of the market for
bulk, powdered tempeh starter, and became financially independent
from The Farm. In May 1984 the Tempeh Lab (under the directorship
of Cynthia Bates) became independent of Farm Foods. Both became
for-profit companies. In March 1984 The Farm published Tempeh
Cookery with full-page color photos. To promote this book (and
tempeh), in June 1984 Farm Foods and its sister company, The Book
Publishing Company, served samples of deep-fried tempeh and several
tofu dishes to 20,000 attendees of the American Booksellers
Association Convention in Washington, D.C. Farm Foods was also
planning to have one or more large tempeh companies (perhaps one on
each coast of the USA) make private labeled tempeh, which would
then be sold nationwide through the company's extensive soy milk
ice cream (Ice Bean) distribution channels. Farm Foods could then
also use the tempeh, the starter, and the book to promote each
other. Rodale Press published Camille Cusumano's Tofu, Tempeh,
& Other Soy Delights.
Over the centuries, wherever Javanese people have gone, they
have taken tempeh with them. Today, it is widely produced and
consumed in Suriname (where 30% of the population is Indonesian),
and on the west and south coasts of Peninsular Malaysia. To a
lesser extent it is consumed in Singapore, New Caledonia, and the
other Indonesian Islands (especially Sumatra). Tempeh is also
increasingly popular in the Netherlands.