In 1884 an American writer called chop suey China’s national dish, yet in 1903 a visitor from Guangdong wrote that Chinese people in America refused to eat it. This episode looks at what chop suey is, why its name means something like odds and ends or mixed leftovers, and how the term once referred to cooked animal organs.

We debunk the popular origin myths involving railroad workers, Qing statesman Li Hongzhang, and drunk miners in San Francisco, and trace the dish to Taishan in Guangdong. Then we follow how Chinese-American restaurant owners adapted it for American diners, its 1920s popularity with artists and theater crowds, its later label as inauthentic, and why it held on in the Midwest.

• What chop suey means and how the name once referred to cooked organ meats
• Why historians reject the railroad, Li Hongzhang, and San Francisco miner stories
• How the dish traces back to Taishan, the home region of many early Chinese immigrants
• How Chinese-American restaurants adapted chop suey for American tastes to survive
• Why chop suey lost its cool on the coasts but stayed popular in the Midwest