In article >, Wayne
Boatwright > wrote:

> "Mark Zanger" > wrote in
> news:jSLeb.649621$YN5.499388@sccrnsc01:
>
> > Phil, I think "American Chop Suey" is differentiated from
> > Chinese-American, by *not* having soy sauce or bean sprouts, but being
> > a stew of beef and celery served on rice. I think the origin is the
> > WWI army manual recipe for "Chop Suey Stew" which I quote in my
> > American History Cookbook. Jean Anderson's _American Century Cookbook_
> > also dates it from the 1920s. Chinese-American chop suey is clearly
> > older, was served in 19th Century restaurants in Boston and San
> > Francisco, and is a bad transliteration of something from Choisan that
> > has never been identified, although suey is probably Tsui (cabbage or
> > general food). Chop may be an abbreviation of pidgin English
> > "chop-chop," meaning 'fast,' or just English 'chop' as slice or cut
> > rapidly.
> >
> > Goulash was originally a cowherd's soup of stringy beef and caraway,
> > later dominated by paprika. It has a weird mirror life with chili con
> > carne, which was originally a cowherd's soup of stringy beef and
> > peppers, to which cumin seed and beans were added around San
> > Antonio... But the goulash you refer to is goulash in the sense of
> > "mixed up random stuff," presumably a response to the association of
> > the dish in Europe with Gypsies, and imported either by German
> > immigrants in the 19th Century, or directly responding to German and
> > Hungarian immigrants early in the 20th century. I'd look for early
> > 20th century cites on a dish that clearly isn't mainly beef and
> > paprika.
> >
> > Do you have a clear cite for Marzetti's restaurant, such as where it
> > was?
> >
> >
>
> Jumping in here... Having been there many times, the original marzetti's
> restaurant was in downtown Columbus, Ohio, and was a family run operation
> for decades.

Jean Anderson's book seems to support this (mentioned both by Mark and
by ConnieG in this thread). Whether her information is accurate I can't
say, myself. Certainly the people who have described Johnny Marzetti to
me have been from (or lived in) South Central Ohio, which suggests
they'd know more about it than this New Yorker.

Phil