How 'bout the good ol' Hamburger?

it's been done. so I decide the next topic will Chinese food recipes in western newspapers pre 1950.

Thomas Jefferson recipes. He changed food and cooking in America.

dcarch

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New Orleans/ Gulf coast recipes.

Would be interested in pioneer trail type recipes, i.e. one cannot live solely on roast squirrel/rabbit on a stick over the campfire forever.

Cowboy/chuck wagon meals.

Cowboy/chuck wagon meals.

Just like in Blazing Saddles

Well, I would hope a little more authentic.............

If you have read Andrea Wulf's FoundingGardeners you will no doubt find Madison was most influential in our early agriculture.

I find myself in the NYPublic library a few times a year. Where I found my corncake recipe.

I also like single item histories...

Egg

Tomato

Beans

It is interesting how foreign cuisines get adapted and Americanized. Italian-American is a well known example. Chinese-American is another. The 1940-1950s were probably the height of Chinese-American food as a separate cuisine, distinct from "authentic" Chinese cuisine. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Chinese_cuisine

Sleevendog, I got a great book for Christmas which you might enjoy:

“The Seven Culinary Wonders of the World: A History of Pork, Honey, Salt, Chilli, Rice, Cacao and Tomato”, by Jenny Lindford

here is one thing I learned about American Chinese food la choy products were introduced in 1922

la choy advertisement 1922

list of few la choy products 1924 fixed

Both links go to the same ad.

Wargarden, this is such an interesting topic. There was so much racism against the early Chinese immigrants. I know nothing of when it changed to other Americans eating Chinese or Chinese-American food.

Something that fascinates me, if you're compiling a list, is the rise of sliced bread cookery, from school lunch sandwiches to canapes.

plllog my goal of the thread i will be posting; will be non political; and recipes only.

I will posting American Chinese food recipes that appeared in newspapers pre 1950.

There was so much racism against the early Chinese immigrants. I know nothing of when it changed to other Americans eating Chinese or Chinese-American food.

I don't know that the one precludes the other (lots of racists have always eaten foods first thought up by enslaved people, for instance), but chinoiserie of all sorts seemed to be the rage in the 20s. Not just food, but mahjong, "Chinese" decor, etc. As a matter of fact, I seem to remember that marcolo of GW kitchen forum fame wanted to try to duplicate this Crane bathroom in his renovation of a 1920s house:

Cool. I'm familiar with the chinoiserie of the English Regency period, but the only thing that comes to mind for the 1920's and Chinese is Thoroughly Modern Millie, and that was an exaggerated stereotype. So, you suggest that all things China were stylish in the 1920's. I've read about the reception of the Chinese in California, more than half a century prior, where everything about them was so different, from the language to the food to their appearance, that the European cultural heritage people couldn't even begin to understand and interact with them. Wargarden, I wasn't trying to be political. I'm just interested in what Chinese foods made the bridge to people who were so flummoxed by them.

So, you suggest that all things China were stylish in the 1920's.

Well, yes, but it was more the western idea of China than the actuality. Vizcaya, James Deering's home in Miami, has a most sp]endid Chinoiserie bedroom, but it's significant that it's called the Cathay room rather than the Chinese room, I think.

It may be more indicative of the dichotomy to consider that I was extremely confused for several pages in "The Dancing Dectective" by Cornell Woolrich, published in 1946 about dime-a-dance hostesses in the Depression, by the fact that the narrator keeps talking about how clients can take the girls out to a laundry. It took me a while to realize she was talking about Chinese restaurants.

Whoa. Did you learn what the reality was? Were they one stop commerce with actual laundry and cookery in the same place? We had a place like that nearby (not Chinese) when I was a kid. They had fluff and fold, coin op laundry, shoe repair, a snack bar, a candy counter, and I don't remember what all else. It wasn't huge, just really varied. :) Or did it mean "laundry" as in refusing to use the word "restaurant"? I'm realizing now, I know remarkably little about the 1920's beyond prohibition, jazz and the clothes. And one of my grandmothers was a "modern" (I didn't know her, but maybe I should learn more about what was going on in her youth). Thanks for opening my eyes.

I didn't get the impression that anyone went there to get a spot out of his shirt, no, but rather that it was just because they were run by Chinese, known for their laundering. Of course, the thing that initially tipped me off that they meant "restaurant" was references to chop suey.

A dish I still don't understand, I must say. I've seen many recipes and and none of them have much of anything in common with each other, let alone with even typical takeout-style "Chinese" cooking.

I'm really looking forward to what you find out about early Chinese American food.

My impression is that when Chinese first came to the US around the 1860s, in the Gold Rush era, they weren't professional chefs. The ones who started restaurants were mostly home cooks, using their traditional techniques with unfamiliar ingredients, sometimes in rough conditions, to improvise dishes pleasing to a non-Chinese clientele, probably looking for hearty filling and tasty rather than refined.

For example, "chop suey" would probably have generically meant some meat and some veg, stir fried in some sort of thickened sauce. Exactly what ingredients must have depended on what was available. I'm imagining that chop suey in a mining camp in 1865 might not have much resembled Chinese food as we think of it today.

Later on, I'd imagine Chinese restaurants became more urban and less improvised. As Chinese populations grew and Chinatowns formed, the customers were more likely to want some variant of the dishes they remembered from China. As some Chinese restaurants became stylish with elaborate china and attracted Western (non-Chinese) customers, the diners could pay for better food and would have demanded finer fare. There might have been more culinary talent and resources available, as chefs in China heard about the opportunities in the West. So perhaps the dishes became more refined and certain "standard" dishes were named - "chow mein", "Orange chicken", "General Tso's", "Mongolian Beef", etc.

I'm actually quite curious where the early Chinese American cooks came from. I've read that early Chinese American cusine was dominated by one particular type of Chinese cooking - Cantonese maybe. Is that because early emigration to the US was primarily from that area of China?

This is a really interesting project, thanks for thinking of it!

John, I always am fascinated by the drift Chinese cooking took when it went to the US. Although Chinese gold seekers came to Australia at a similar time to when they went to the US, and were similarly discriminated against, the food stayed pretty much the same. When DH and I first went to Hong Kong, we were pleasantly surprised that the food was almost identical to the Chinese food at home- and we weren’t eating in tourist restaurants, but wet markets and workers’ cafes. My mother would have been horrified at a lot of the dodgy looking places we found to eat :-). But it was all good :-D

Interestingly, when I visited the Victorian goldfields town of Bendigo last year, at their Chinese museum I discovered that during the gold rush, Chinese men were preferred as husbands by many European women, as they did not squander their earnings on alcohol or beat their wives, in the main. Bendigo also has the world’s oldest extant dragon costume and the longest one (which needs over 100 men to operate) as well (they have about eight). At Easter rather than Chinese New Year the current dragon comes out for a parade, with many of the descendants wearing antique costumes that came out over 100 years ago and more. A gilded carriage has to be seen to be wondered at.

I’d love to be in Bendigo this Easter as the current dragon is retiring in favour of a new dragon, and both will be parading this year as the current dragon “shows” the new dragon the route. Alas, it will probably not happen :-(

Some time back, I read the book,

Chop Suey: A Cultural History of Chinese Food in the United States, by Andrew Coe, which covers some of the actual history of foods from China that were adapted to American tastes back in the early days. It was an interesting read, but I'd have to re-read it to recall much about what it had to say. (It was a while ago).

Sounds like a great topic.