Chinese chicken salad
A fusion salad popularized in California during the 1960s.
Chinese chicken salad is a salad made with chopped chicken and Chinese culinary ingredients, common in parts of the United States. It typically includes lettuce, cabbage, carrots, cucumbers, chicken breast, deep-fried wonton skins or rice vermicelli, and nuts such as sliced almonds, cashews, or peanuts. A basic vinaigrette often contains vegetable oil, sesame oil, and rice vinegar or citrus juice, with optional seasonings like dry hot mustard, sesame seeds, coriander, or ginger.
Quick Facts
- Country
- United States
- Main ingredients
- Chicken
- Chinese noodles
- lettuce
- ginger
- sesame oil
Facts from the source article.
History
The Chinese chicken salad popular in the United States appears to be a product of pan-Asian or fusion cuisine influences rather than having roots in Chinese cuisine. One reason for this theory is that green lettuce salad is a dish of primarily Western origins, though many non-Western cultures also have traditional salads. In Fashionable Food: Seven Decades of Food Fads, Sylvia Lovegren notes that while there are many types of cold chicken salad in China, most originating in Szechwan, the version consumed by the fashionable set likely originated in California.
Akasha Richmond, in Hollywood Dish, writes that Hollywood gave rise to more salads than just the Caesar and Cobb, and that the 1960s produced the Chinese (or Shredded) Chicken Salad, which was popular at Madame Wu's in Santa Monica. Cary Grant told her about the dish. According to a website about Sylvia Wu, known as Madame Wu, she created something better using a recipe she vaguely remembered from Shanghai, blending shredded chicken, fried vermicelli, green onions, and toasted almonds.
Madame Wu's soon became known for her Chinese chicken salad, now an American luncheon classic. The Settlement Cookbook from 1910 includes a simple lettuce salad with chopped onion and French or German dressing, but no Chinese, Asian, or Oriental salad. Similar bound chicken salads appear in the 1974 edition of Joy of Cooking. By the 1950s, main course salads like Caesar salad began appearing in books such as Better Homes & Gardens, New Cook Book, alongside the usual bound chicken salad, but still no Asian-styled salads.
The Good Housekeeping Cookbook introduced a Sesame-Spinach Salad with soy sauce and salad oil, though not sesame oil, bringing flavors closer to Asian cuisine, along with a few curry salads. The next generation of more exotic main course salads was on the way.
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