When you want Chinese takeout, nothing else will do. The arrival of those steaming dumplings, lo mein, sesame chicken, fried rice (white or brown) and hot and crispy egg rolls with complementary soy sauces and fortune cookies are practically ceremonial to a proper Saturday night staying in.
However, today being a Tuesday, you can still feel free in choosing to stay in.
The foundations for what we know as Chinese food were laid in the mid-1800s, when a huge influx of Chinese immigrants came to California during the Yukon Gold Rush.
When American Chinese restaurants first stepped out into mainstream culture, they offered two menus: a Chinese menu and an American menu.
The American menu soon became the only menu due to the crowds of young Americans hungry for savory sauces only found in the American Chinese dishes.
Despite the success of early Chinese restaurants in California, that food eventually became a focal point of many an anti-Chinese argument.
During that time, prejudiced American groups were quick to label the growing numbers of Chinatowns in cities throughout the country as “nuisances,” largely because of what was termed the unpleasant “stench” of Chinese kitchens, and many nineteenth century editorialists earnestly asked “Do the Chinese Eat Rats?”
The U.S. Congress even served up such rhetoric; in an 1879 speech, then-Senator of Maine James G. Blaine declared, “You cannot work a man who must have beef and bread, and would prefer beef, alongside a man who can live on rice.”
Such would necessarily “bring down the beef-and-bread man to the rice standard.” Blaine, unsurprisingly, was among the earliest supporters of the Chinese Exclusion Act.
On November 13, 1894, in Chicago, Illinois, American inventor Frederick Weeks Wilcox patented a version of what he called a “paper pail".
It was a single piece of paper, creased into segments and folded into a (more or less) leakproof container secured with a dainty wire handle on top. The folded paper boxes that have now become a staple of American Chinese food were traditionally used to transport oysters.
In the 1920s, American eaters were shocked when they learned that “the average native of any city in China knows nothing of chop suey.”
In spite of past racist backlash, good food was still good food. The turn of the 20th century saw the emergence of Chop Suey joints as hip and affordable places for young urbanites to spend a night out.
Like most popular Chinese dishes in the United States, this particular mélange of meat, egg and vegetable wasn’t actually Chinese.
American journalist Jennifer 8. Lee called the Chop Suey dish the biggest culinary prank one culture has ever pulled on another; translated from the original Chinese, Chop Suey means “odds and ends,” more colloquially known as “leftovers.”
Regardless of its dubious authenticity, such adaptation of Chinese cooking to American palates was a key element in the proliferation and popularization of Chinese cuisine in the United States.
Throughout the early 20th century, “Chinese” dishes became sweeter, boneless, and more heavily deep-fried.
Broccoli, a vegetable unheard of in China, started appearing on menus and fortune cookies, a sweet originally thought to be from Japan, finished off a “typical” Chinese meal.
Despite their popularity in American Chinese dishes, broccoli, tomatoes, carrots, and yellow onions aren’t typically found in actual Chinese restaurants because they aren’t vegetables native to China.
Today, order in, boil some tea and have some chow mein or Szechuan chicken.
And, as it says on the box: Enjoy!
What is your favorite Chinese take-out food?
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