Kin had a laboratory at the U.S.D.A., where she tested what the department called “Chinese soybean cheese,” and she presented soybean seeds to the department’s Bureau of Plant Industry. In addition, Roth said, some of her recipes were very likely included in “The Soybean,” a landmark study published in 1910 by William J. Morse and Charles V. Piper, officials at the Agriculture Department.

“Americans do not know how to use the soybean,” Kin, then in her early 50s, told The New York Times Magazine in 1917, as she set out for China on her mission. “It must be made attractive or they will not take to it. It must taste good. That can be done.”

An article in 1918 in The San Antonio Light offered this description of her lab:

“On a long table was a row of glass jars filled with what looked like slices of white cheese. It was soy bean cheese. A jar was filled with a brownish paste. It was soy beans. There were bottles filled with the condiment we get with chop suey. That, too, was made from soy beans. Talk about dual personalities! The soy bean has so many aliases that if you shouldn’t like it in one form you would be pretty sure to like it in another.”

In essays and correspondence at the time, U.S.D.A. colleagues expressed glowing praise for Kin’s work.