Talk:Sweet and sour sauce

Comment 1
Sweet and Sour is a sauce, why would you want to include it in a specific meal? It's like merging ketchup with french fries with ketchup.

Only a Euro-centric proletraite would consider sweet and sour sauce and sweet and sour pork to be the same thing


 * Yes, but as the only interesting thing about sweet and sour pork is that it contains sweet and sour sauce, why would you want articles on both? JulesH 08:44, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

The difficulty seems to be that the sweet and sour pork article has been made to heavily overlap with the sauce article. Sweet and sour pork in both its iterations (gulaorou) and (tangculiji) have distinct enough traditions and variations within Chinese cuisine that they could be kept apart from 'sweet and sour sauce', particularly since sweet and sour sauce differs so widely in preparation within China, and the rest of the world. Sabodav October 2006

--Is all sweet and sour sauce of recent Chinese origin? I was pretty sure that it was a common flavor in Central Asia (Indian date-tamarind relish, for instance) and into Eastern Europe (many variants of stuffed cabbage are sweet and sour). Thus I'd have imagined, if it was Chinese to begin with, that it spread via the Silk Road long before Chinese restaurants.
 * I don't think it's old enough to spread via the Silk Road, besides, Silk Road is far from its origin, it's more likely came from early Chinese immigrants to California. cecikierk

Why is Sweet & Sour usually colored red?
In many (most?) American Chinese restaurants, the sweet & sour sauce has red food coloring added. why is this? Richardmasoner 19:47, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
 * The original Cantonese recipe calls for ketchup in addition to vinegar. In fact the vinegar is served to save the amount of ketchup used.  The colour is red as a result of this, although many of the Western world's Chinese restaurants now omit ketchup altogether to save cost and used red food colouring as substitute. --JNZ 07:33, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

"Always popular in China"?
I removed the phrase "It has always been popular in Chinese cuisine", because it's always been more popular overseas than in China. USER: cecikierk

Confusing apparent contradiction
The article now says:


 * Chinese restaurants in Western countries commonly serve chicken, pork, or shrimp that has been battered and deep-fried, then served with a sweet and sour sauce poured over the meat. Although this preparation is considered traditional across American and European countries, it does not resemble authentic Chinese methods of preparation, except for those found in certain Cantonese or Hunan regions.

That is to say, "It isn't authentically Chinese, except it's regional Cantonese or Hunan." Which seems to imply that regional Cantonese or Hunan cusisine is not authentically Chinese. How can this possibly be right? --FOo (talk) 05:21, 20 April 2010 (UTC)


 * It's nonsense; I've deleted it. 99.234.64.72 (talk) 14:16, 30 September 2010 (UTC)