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American Chop Suey

A stir‑fry of pork, chicken, gizzards, livers, and vegetables simmered in stock with Worcestershire sauce and mushroom ketchup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Pork and chicken match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,417 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓

American Chop Suey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meats

  1. Fry the pork in lard until brown.

  2. Dice the cooked chicken.

  3. Fry the gizzards and livers in the same way as the pork.

Make the stew

  1. Rub the stew pan with garlic before adding the mixture.

  2. Combine all meats in a stew pan and pour in the chicken stock.

  3. Add the mushrooms, corn, and green beans, and cook slowly for 1 hour.

  4. Thicken the mixture with browned flour.

  5. Stir in Worcestershire sauce and mushroom ketchup before serving.

Serve

  1. Serve with rice 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. Pork + chickentop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,417 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

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

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

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

  4. Pork + livertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,606 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-nonanal (fatty, waxy).

  5. Pork + corntop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,069 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Pork tenderloin
Provides the main meaty body of the stew once browned in lard.
Chicken gizzards and livers
Add rich, deeply savoury meat flavour and a firmer, chewy texture to the stew.
Browned flour
Thickens the stock into a gravy and adds a toasty, nutty colour and flavour.
French mushrooms
Add earthy, savoury umami flavour and tender bite to the stew.
Chicken stock
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavour and gently cooks the meats.

The step that matters

Frying the pork until brown. Browning meat creates Maillard reaction flavours that the slow simmer cannot add later. Pale meat leaves the stew tasting flat and boiled.

Swap the green beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, chicken, liver, mushroom, corn, flour, sauce):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Green beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, chicken, liver, mushroom, corn, flour, sauce. 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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