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Chop Suey

A stir‑fry of steak, onions, and tomatoes served with egg noodles.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,923 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Chop Suey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sauce base

  1. Heat 2 cans of strained tomatoes with salt, pepper, and 2 tablespoons of butter in a stew kettle.

  2. Trim fat and sinews from the round steak.

  3. Fry the trimmed fat in a pan until rendered, then remove the scraps from the pan and keep the rendered fat hot.

Make the steak and onion

  1. Cut the steak into small pieces and add them to the hot fat.

  2. Slice the onions and add them to the steak.

  3. Season the mixture with salt and pepper.

  4. Stir to prevent burning.

  5. Cook until the steak is brown and tender.

  6. Add the cooked steak to the kettle with the tomatoes.

  7. Set the kettle to simmer slowly.

  8. Add ½ lb of butter to the kettle.

Make and cook the noodles

  1. Beat 2 eggs with ½ cup of cold water and a pinch of salt.

  2. Mix in enough flour to form a stiff dough.

  3. Roll out the dough very thin.

  4. Cut the dough into strips about ½ inch wide.

  5. Bring water to a boil in a kettle and add salt to the boiling water.

  6. Drop the noodles into the boiling water and boil them for ½ hour.

  7. Drain the noodles in a colander.

  8. Add the drained noodles to the tomatoes and steak.

  9. Stir to mix thoroughly.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Round steak
Provides the meaty base; browning and slow simmering make it tender.
Eggs
Bind the noodle dough and add structure and richness to the noodles.
Flour
Forms the stiff dough that gives the noodles their body.
Strained tomatoes
Form the liquid base of the sauce and add acidity and flavour.
Onion
Adds sweetness and aroma as it cooks with the steak.

The step that matters

Cook the noodles for the full time in boiling water. Fresh noodles need to boil fully in rapidly boiling salted water to cook through and release surface starch; too little heat or time leaves them doughy and gummy when stirred into the sauce.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, butter, onion, egg, flour):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, butter, onion, egg, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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