Skip to main content
Main

Chop Suey

A stir‑fry of chicken, veal, onions, celery, mushrooms, and rice in a soy‑based sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Chicken and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,172 recipes. Both carry 1-butyl acetate, which smells fruity, banana. The science ↓

Chop Suey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the chicken and veal together until fully cooked.

  2. Remove the meat from the bones and cut it into 1‑inch strips.

Cook the vegetables

  1. In a frying pan, heat a little butter or chicken fat over medium heat.

  2. Add the sliced onions and celery, and fry for 10 minutes.

Combine and serve

  1. Combine the chicken, veal, mushrooms, and fried vegetables in the pan and mix well.

  2. Thicken the chicken broth with browned flour and pour it over the mixture.

  3. Keep on low heat until ready to serve.

  4. Serve with mashed potatoes or noodles.

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. Chicken + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,172 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-butyl acetate (fruity, banana).

  2. Chicken + ricetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,769 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

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

  4. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the main meat and the broth that is thickened into the sauce.
Veal
Adds a second meat, cooked tender by boiling before it is sliced into strips.
Onions
Soften and sweeten when fried, adding flavour to the vegetable base.
Celery
Stays crisp-tender when fried briefly, adding texture to the mixture.
Mushrooms
Add moisture and earthy flavour to the mixed filling.

The step that matters

Thicken the broth with browned flour. Flour must be cooked enough to lose its raw taste, and stirred in evenly so it thickens smoothly rather than forming lumps. Adding it to hot liquid gives the sauce body.

Swap the celery

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, veal, onion, mushroom, rice, sauce, butter. 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.

More chop suey recipes

American 4Chicken 3 See all 23 →

You might also like

Chicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesCreamed ChickenCreamed Chicken89 recipes