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Chris -- 2018-04-11
I remember asking for “suey sauce” as a kid—in place of “soy sauce.” I thought I’d find a few on the web, but saw only one indirect mention…
Chow Mein Sandwich – Ontario (including Toronto) – ChowhoundJun 8, 2008 … Most people doused it with “suey sauce”. (The commercial for which went “La Choy makes Chinese food taste – American! ...
chowhound.chow.com/topics/527062 – Cached – Similar
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Does it mean anything other than being a properish noun/adjective for “this particular kind of sauce�
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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I think Joe must be thinking of “suey” sauce as using an element from “chop suey.” And there are other citations for “suey sauce” that appear to be referring to soy sauce, but in some cases it’s hard to tell what the writer meant because people really do seem to talk about a sauce that will provide a basis for chop suey, and such sauces almost always include soy sauce.
In any case, the 1916 book Productive Farm Crops explicitly refers to “suey sauce” as something made from soy beans—see page 430 if this books.google.com link works: http://books.google.com/books?id=mMlBAA … op&f=false
Last edited by patschwieterman (2011-01-14 20:01:04)
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Pat frames it correctly. It wasn’t just any type of condiment sauce being used to top the suey, it was specifically soy sauce … and the “soy” got reshaped to “suey.”
Last edited by jorkel (2011-01-14 20:25:17)
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I get it. Slow on the uptake this morning.
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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Chop suey itself appears to be an eggcorn. Wikipedia says that chop suey comes from Chinese æ‚碎, which is romanized as zá suì; literally “assorted pieces”, or “mixed broken”. So the ‘suey’ part means chopped, and the ‘chop’ part means tossed.
We document eggcorns hatched by Chinese speakers; I don’t suppose we’ll get too far in exposing English miss translations. Soy and suey is a great start that might be pushed a bit further with, for example, char siu. This refers to a manner of roasting pork, literally as “fork roasted/burnt” from the way it is hung in the roasting oven. What a coincidence then, that char should mean much the same in English and Cantonese! At least it would be uncanny were it not that char means “fork”, and siu, “roasted/charred”.
Photo menu Roast Pork, Roast Chicken & Char Suey
Or maybe do-yourself barbecue pork—char sui, an auto-da-fé.
Home cooking Char sui (Chinese barbecue sauce)
The marinade for the pork is called char sui sauce. You can buy char sui sauce in jars or you can make your own. My char sui turned out great but I should have grilled the meat over lower heat. To make sure that the pork gets cooked through without too much charring on the surface, keep the heat down.
Resto tips my personal favorite, the Charred Sui Boneless Ribs-Sugar-Cured Pork in a Chinese barbecue sauce.
See also chopped sticks.
Last edited by burred (2011-01-15 06:16:38)
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Alas, referring to “soy sauce” as “suey sauce” just might be a personal eggcorn. I get zero Google hits for “pass the suey sauce”, “shake the suey sauce”, and “bottle of suey sauce.” And here’s the other thing … I suspect I always knew the stuff as “soy sauce” and considered “suey sauce” as an alternative way of referring to it, but it wasn’t linguistically understood to be simply “sauce to be used on chop suey” since I wouldn’t have referred to any other sauce that way; only the soy sauce.
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The roundtripper also works. Lots of examples of “chop soy” in place of “chop suey” on the web.
Chinese restaurant menu: “ Chop soy with chicken â€
Pizza place web site: “ Chop soy should not be served with pizza. â€
Restaurant blurb: “Diners can take their pick from many different fillings, from the classic cheese and ham to chicken and chop soy.â€
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
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