词汇 | chop suey |
词源 | chop suey. Chop suey isn’t native to China; in fact, most ac- counts of its origin say that the dish was invented in America. The widely accepted theory, advanced by Herbert Asbury in his Gangs of New York (1928), makes the tasty melange the brain- child of a San Francisco dishwasher, though the Chinese dish- washer is sometimes promoted to a “cook in a California gold mining camp.” I’ve traced the term’s invention, however, to 1896, when it was concocted in New York by Chinese ambassa- dor Li Hung-chang’s chef, who tried to devise a dish appealing to both American and Chinese tastes. Since the ambassador had three chefs, it’s hard to say which one invented chop suey. The name has nothing to do with the English word “chop,” de- riving instead from the Cantonese dialect shap sui, which means “pieces of mixed bits,” sui being the Chinese for “bits.” The chef who invented it took leftover pieces of pork and chick- en and cooked them together with bean sprouts, green peppers, mushrooms, and seasonings in a gravy, serving it with rice and soy sauce. |
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