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One account claims that it was invented by Chinese American cooks working on the transcontinental railroad in the 19th century. Filipino chop suey, introduced during the American colonial period of the Philippines The long list of conflicting stories about the origin of chop suey is, in the words of food historian Alan Davidson, "a prime example of culinary mythology" and typical of popular foods. Hong Kong doctor Li Shu-fan likewise reported that he knew it in Toisan in the 1890s. Anderson, a scholar of Chinese food, traces the dish to tsap seui (杂碎, "miscellaneous leftovers"), common in Taishan (Toisan), a county in Guangdong province, the home of many early Chinese immigrants to the United States. by Chinese Americans, but the anthropologist E. In Chinese Indonesian cuisine/Dutch Chinese Indonesian cuisine it is known as cap cai (tjap tjoi) (雜菜, "mixed vegetables") and mainly consists of vegetables.Ĭhop suey is widely believed to have been developed in the U.S.
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It is typically served with rice but can become the Chinese-American form of chow mein with the substitution of stir-fried noodles for rice.Ĭhop suey has become a prominent part of American Chinese cuisine, Filipino cuisine, Canadian Chinese cuisine, German Chinese cuisine, Indian Chinese cuisine, and Polynesian cuisine. Chop sueyĬhop suey ( / ˈ tʃ ɒ p ˈ s uː i/) is a dish in American Chinese cuisine and other forms of overseas Chinese cuisine, consisting of meat (usually chicken, pork, beef, shrimp or fish) and eggs, cooked quickly with vegetables such as bean sprouts, cabbage, and celery and bound in a starch-thickened sauce. For the song by System of a Down, see Chop Suey! For other uses, see Chop suey (disambiguation). For the New England dish, see American chop suey.
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