Some examples, according to the list:
Beef broccoli – can’t be Chinese. There was no broccoli in China before 1980, but the dish has been in America since the 1920s.
Fortune cookies, invented in California, are sold in China as “American cookies”
7 “Chinese” Foods That Aren’t Really Chinese
I used to have a joke about this whenever people asked if I could speak Chinese. I would tell them “very little. I can say Chow mein. Look funn. Char Siu. Beef Broccoli Cake Noodle. Numbah 37…” in the most whacked out Chinese accent I could muster.
Re broccoli: “In 2023, global production of broccoli (combined for production reports with cauliflowers) was 26.5 million tonnes, with China and India together accounting for 65% of the world total (table). Secondary producers, each having about one million tonnes or less annually, were the United States, Mexico, and Spain.” Wiki
That stat includes cauliflower, which has been around in China longer. Neither has been in China long.
From a Chinese blogger:
A major culinary site says that neither vegetable was available in China before 1980. Beef broccoli has been on the menu in “Chinese restaurants” in the USA since the 1920s, so it must be an American invention.
According to Wikipedia “beef broccoli” was based on a Chinese dish using gai lan (Brassica oleracea var. alboglabra), which was replaced with broccoli in America. Gai lan is sometimes called “Chinese broccoli.” It supposedly tastes a lot like broccoli, but is actually more like cabbage in appearance.
“Broccoli resulted from the breeding of landrace Brassica crops in the northern Mediterranean starting in about the sixth century BCE. Broccoli has its origins in primitive cultivars grown in the Roman Empire and was most likely improved via artificial selection in the southern Italian Peninsula or in Sicily. Broccoli was spread to northern Europe by the 18th century and brought to North America in the 19th century by Italian immigrants.”
Wikipedia.
Everything with hot chilies or other peppers in it- chilies were brought by the Columbian exchange. Just like how anything with tomatoes isn’t really italian food.
Well Christ, that gets silly in a hurry. Does that mean pasta isn’t Italian either because the Chinese invented noodles. Maybe hot Szechuan food only goes back 400 years, but they’ve still sort of made it their own.
That said – Et tu, General Tso? The story was that the personal chef to the #2 official of the CCP escaped and ended up in CT, where I was going to grad school. We’d go with some of the Chinese students. They’d speak Chinese with the waiter for about ten seconds, then an incredible dinner would come out. When we went with no one Chinese, I would get the General. Not full-on hurt-me hot, but tasty and with some punch. Ah well, give the people what they want, I guess.
The difference is – while historically those ingrediants didn’t come from China/Italy, dishes using them have been part of those countries’ cuisines for many lifetimes now. No one alive has been around when Chillis were not ubiquitous in China, or Tomatoes haven’t been common in italy.
Broccolli, on the other hand, has been eaten in American-Chinese food for longer than it has been eaten in China.