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Mock Chop Suey

A stir‑fry of diced roast pork, celery, onion, mushrooms, and gravy seasoned with curry powder, salt, and paprika, served over rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Mock Chop Suey

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Fry the celery and onion in the butter until tender, about 30 minutes.

  2. Add the gravy and season with salt, paprika, and curry powder to taste.

  3. Cook together for a few minutes, then add the meat and mushrooms.

Serve

  1. Serve around a mound of hot boiled rice.

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. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  2. Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Celery + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Pork + mushroomtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-propylphenol (allspice, anise).

  5. Mushroom + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,515 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold roast pork
Provides the main protein and meaty bulk of the filling.
Celery
Adds crisp-tender texture and a mild, fresh vegetable flavour when cooked.
Onion
Softens and sweetens as it cooks, building the base flavour of the filling.
Butter
Carries the frying of the vegetables and adds richness and flavour.
Gravy or stock
Supplies moisture and body, forming the sauce that binds the filling.
Button mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and a soft, meaty texture to the filling.

The step that matters

Frying the celery and onion until tender. Cooking the vegetables slowly in butter softens their cell structure and draws out sweetness. Stopping early leaves them crunchy and raw-tasting in the finished dish.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, mushroom, onion, butter, rice):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Celerythe original
  4. Parsleyfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, mushroom, onion, butter, rice. 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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