I can speak to the ubiquity of bean sprouts in Chinese American food. There were and are things that are easy to get in China but difficult or impossible to get in the US. Bean sprouts were not one of those things. You soak some mung beans and put them in a jar, and a week later, you'll have a jar full of sprouts. Mung beans themselves grow fine here, so it's not like they had to import the dry beans that often. You could just grow some of those sprouts into full sized plants and start all over again. I guess people who owned Chinese restaurants in the US would just have stashes of sprouts growing anywhere they could fit them. Not a lot of vegetables can do that!
It was a Chinese dish that made me learn to appreciate bean sprouts. There was a much-loved little place in Central Square, Cambridge, MA., that served a spicy, soupy wonton dish called "suan la chow sho" that was topped with bean sprouts. The sprouts were the perfect, crunchy compliment to the hot, savory wontons.
RU-vid sucks. Makes it so hard to find this channel. Typed in Chinese American food history and after 30 videos they started recommending tomato sauce 😢
I've always been curious about exotic ingredients like bamboo shoots and lotus root, things of that nature. Traditional isn't ancient, so what did ancient chinese dishes consist of??? Quality content👍👍
There are quite a lot of ancient Chinese text on food. They are just horrible to read even in Chinese. Yuan Mei's The Way of Eating from the Qing Dynasty is probably most accessible if you are interested: books.google.com/books?id=5me9DwAAQBAJ
