Chop suey adorned tables at Chicago’s exclusive Victoria Hotel, while American socialites served the dish at parties in their upscale private residences. Chefs prepared it for high-brow club meetings, plays, and formal balls. King called the “Chinese epicurean sensibility” to the American ruling class. This writer also extolled “a toothsome stew composed of bean sprouts, chicken’s gizzards and livers, calf’s tripe, dragon fish, dried and imported from China, pork, chicken and various other ingredients which I was unable to make out.” That was chop suey.Īt the start of the 20th century, this stew came to exemplify what historian Samuel C. In 1886, journalist Allan Forman recalled a splendid meal taken in New York’s Mong Sing Wah, a place he called a “Celestial Delmonico’s”-a label that compared the Chinese restaurant favorably to the era’s leading fine-dining establishment. What’s inside a can of La Choy Vegetable Chop Suey? Bean sprouts, celery, water, salt, water chestnuts, onion, carrots, bamboo shoots, sugar, red bell peppers, monosodium glutamate, dehydrated garlic, ascorbic acid (“to protect color”), citric acid, and “flavor.” Amanda Perez for Gastro Obscuraīut chop suey arrived in the United States in the mid-19th century to much acclaim. Then pour in soy sauce and voilà, you have a quick weeknight meal composed of soggy bean sprouts, soft water chestnuts, and faded pink bell peppers.

To prepare it, heat up a pan, add oil, meat slivers, and sauce-covered vegetables from a tin.

Nowadays, most chop suey ingredients come straight from a can. Coe is on the mark about many American incarnations of the dish.

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