Talk:American chop suey

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I suggest that this subject should be recast as "Macaroni and Beef", which is the commercial name for an entree of pasta and ground beef in tomato sauce. An example is Stouffer's Macaroni and Beef.


 * American chop suey is a regional variation of Macaroni and Beef which is prepared with Worcestershire sauce and often eaten with Worcestershire Sauce or Parmesan cheese as a condiment. It seems to be a New England recipe. From personal experience, I know that this particular recipe is at least 40 years old. I don't doubt that there are equally venerable variations.


 * There are many variations, as suggested by this page.
 * Mohanchous (talk) 07:16, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

I agree with the original editor. Macaroni and Beef, or perhaps Chili Mac would be more universal and less confusing to people from different regions. I've never heard of the term American Chop Suey, and I lived in New England for five years-- long enought to appreciate clam chowder and fluffernutters. --Jcbutler (talk) 22:29, 10 December 2008 (UTC)


 * I would go with Chili Mac. If it's good enough for the army, its good enough for Wikipedia . FiveRings (talk) 18:09, 11 December 2008 (UTC)


 * I've lived in New England all my life (30 years), and my parents and grandparents have lived in New England all their lives (60 years and 90 years, respectively), and all of us -- and everyone we know -- have always referred to this dish as American Chop Suey, and none of us -- and nobody we know -- has ever heard of anything called chili mac. My grandmother has been making American Chop Suey since the 1920s.  Clearly it's not something new. Just because the commercial (and military) versions of this dish have different names doesn't mean that those names are original.  We should be striving for accuracy, even if that is "confusing to people from different regions." —BMRR (talk) 21:49, 9 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I Googled American Chop Suey and there are literally tens of thousands of references to it. —BMRR (talk) 22:00, 9 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Like I said, "American chop suey" gets 118,000 google hits, and "chili mac"/"chilimac"/"chili-mac" gets 434,000. FiveRings (talk) 04:11, 10 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Fair enough, but I think they're two separate dishes. I've never seen an American Chop Suey recipe that had chili in it, or anything chili-related (chili powder, chili sauce, chili peppers, chili spices, etc.).  The chili mac recipes I've seen all seem to contain chili powder or some other chili element -- something you would never find in an American Chop Suey recipe.  I really think they're different dishes and that someone somewhere along the way thought that they were similar and then decided that they were one in the same, when in fact they're not. Therefore, my suggestion would be to start a new article for chili mac, and remove any references in the American Chop Suey article about it being another name for chili mac, when in fact the two dishes are not the same. —BMRR (talk) 04:55, 10 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Similarly, I've never seen worchester sauce in Chili Mac, so I agree. Cooks.com, my preferred recipe source, has two different entry lists. FiveRings (talk) 05:55, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

The problem is very simple. Its a dish with no set ingredients, and can basically be whatever you want as long as it has the macaroni and beef. The Chinese word Chop Suey roughly means whatever you have on hand. As far as terms and accuracy goes, referring to it as American Chop Suey as the article title is improper, as it is definately a regional term. Mrschwen (talk) 07:17, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

There would appear to be two issues here.

The first is labeling of articles. As it would seem to me, labeling on Wikipedia in such matters is determined by verifiability and usability. That is, is there a citation to use as reference for the label and is it the label used most commonly. American Chop Suey clearly meets the first. The second is a more complicated issue as regional differences give at least 3 different names for very similar dishes; "American Chop Suey" for New England and certain other parts of the US Northeast, "Johnny Marzetti" for the greater Ohio region and "American Goulash" for Midwestern regions west of Ohio but South of Minnesota.

The second issue is that some people are apparently lumping together different dishes. While the three dishes mentioned above may be basically the same dish, neither "Chili Mac" nor Beef & Macaroni warrant mention in this article. The differences between "Chili Mac" and "American Chop Suey" have already been laid out in my opinion, one is bastardized Mexican the other is bastardized Italian. However, even a quick search of the term "Beef & Macaroni" gives one many different recipes. Some are very similar to the three mentioned in my first paragraph, however other such recipes are completely different. More simply put, "Beef & Macaroni" can be made from almost anything, just as long as both beef and macaroni are used, other than that, there is no set list of ingredients. It is not a universal term for anything.Reigndog (talk) 20:05, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

American Chop Suey Photo
Is there another picture of American chop suey that we can use? It doesn't really look like chop suey. Xin Jing (talk) 23:00, 13 August 2018 (UTC)