# Foods that are "savory" in one country, "sweet" in another **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [June 22, 2014, 5:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/foods-that-are-savory-in-one-country-sweet-in-another/691352 "2014-06-22T05:14:30Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2014, 10:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/foods-that-are-savory-in-one-country-sweet-in-another/691352/101 "2014-06-24T22:40:06Z")
> [@mbh](#): > > That’s the stuff I was talking about! > > Another one from a branch of the culture. In a little hole-in-the-wall shop in San Francisco’s Chinatown, I once got what I thought was a jelly doughnut. Inside the sweet bread was sweet jelly filling. Inside the jelly, I bit into . . . something cold and moist and slippery. I nearly gagged, before I realized that it was simply a hard-boiled egg. Once I got used to the idea of an egg being sweet, it was pretty good. You never had a Cadbury eggs? ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2014, 4:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/foods-that-are-savory-in-one-country-sweet-in-another/691352/102 "2014-06-25T16:04:11Z")
The Turkish dessert _tavuk göğsü_ is made of chicken flesh boiled into a mush and turned into a blancmange (bland white pudding) by the addition of milk and sugar. In medieval Europe, they had the same recipe (_manjar blanco_), but it survived to the present only in Turkey. > [@even\_sven](#): > > That is, at least, until I got home and discovered it had been whipped with sugar. Blech. To add insult to injury, I them got to hear Chinese people lecture me on how American food was too sweet. I’m tired of Chinese restaurants in America making so many savory dishes coated in thickened sugar syrup. Whether it’s garlic broccoli or fried eggplant, they load on the sugar in the impression that that’s what Americans want. Once trying a Chinese restaurant that word of mouth held to be traditional old-country authentic cuisine, we found the menu divided into two sections: an extensive menu for Chinese tastes, none of which was vegetarian but featured delicacies like congealed pigs’ blood and chickens’ feet. We flipped to the back where the menu geared to American tastes included some vegetarian entrées. I ordered the garlic broccoli and found it sugar-glazed as mentioned above. I did not appreciate the glaze. My companion got a General’s chicken dish, likewise sugar-glazed. It was tantamount to: "You Americans are like children, always wanting your sugar candy."Then you turn on the radio and hear Weezer singing “I eat my candy with my pork and beans” and realize you have no defense to that. I’m one American who uses sugar only sparingly, mostly a teaspoonful at a time to raise the weekly pizza crust. A 5-lb. bag of sugar in my kitchen lasts around 2 years. I do admit to slipping a little sweet soy sauce (_kicap manis_; tastes like salty blackstrap molasses) into my kung pao, along with a little Asian palm sugar, which is so delicious it’s candy in itself and miles beyond cane sugar in flavor, using up to a tablespoonful of it in almost a pint of sauce, which is still a modest amount, so that a block of it lasts for some 2 years. My kung pao also gets a little hoisin sauce which I buy from the Korean supermarket, and that is plenty sugary. So to be honest, all that adds up, and we have to admit we do like us some sweet-hot kung pao. ---
**Author:** ![Macca26](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/13edae/32.png) [@Macca26](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Macca26)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2014, 3:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/foods-that-are-savory-in-one-country-sweet-in-another/691352/103 "2014-06-27T15:31:20Z")
> [@Johanna](#): > > I’m tired of Chinese restaurants in America making so many savory dishes coated in thickened sugar syrup. Whether it’s garlic broccoli or fried eggplant, they load on the sugar in the impression that that’s what Americans want. Once trying a Chinese restaurant that word of mouth held to be traditional old-country authentic cuisine, we found the menu divided into two sections: an extensive menu for Chinese tastes, none of which was vegetarian but featured delicacies like congealed pigs’ blood and chickens’ feet. We flipped to the back where the menu geared to American tastes included some vegetarian entrées. I ordered the garlic broccoli and found it sugar-glazed as mentioned above. I did not appreciate the glaze. My companion got a General’s chicken dish, likewise sugar-glazed. It was tantamount to: "You Americans are like children, always wanting your sugar candy."Then you turn on the radio and hear Weezer singing “I eat my candy with my pork and beans” and realize you have no defense to that. General Tso’s is the poster child of food designed for the American palate. Is there anything even Chinese about it at all? I’d say that if you wanted something authentic you definitely made the wrong choice there. General Tso’s is never made any way but sweet. If you really wanted authentic food you already had your opportunity, but you aimed straight for the American-made dish on the back cover and then were surprised that it held true to form as a sweet dish? Really? ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2014, 12:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/foods-that-are-savory-in-one-country-sweet-in-another/691352/104 "2014-06-29T00:47:30Z")
As I described, we’d found the old-country version of the menu lacking in vegetarian options for me, and downright unappealing in places. It was a matter of _faute de mieux_ that we turned to the American menu, which we had already known was distorted in all kinds of ways, which is why in the first place we were seeking out the old-country version, which turned out to be unappealing. General Zuo’s is my companion’s favorite Chinese _[sic]_ dish, and she found the sugar cranked up to 11 compared to the many other times she’d had that dish other places. As for me, I’d had garlic broccoli many times other places without sugar and thought it excellent; I was not expecting it to come in a sugar glaze, something I’d never seen before. All those other places got it right and did not sugar glaze it. I suppose sooner or later we would have hit such a random variant from the usual patterns anyhow. ---
**Author:** ![Scribble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scribble/32/3317_2.png) [@Scribble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scribble)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2014, 1:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/foods-that-are-savory-in-one-country-sweet-in-another/691352/105 "2014-06-29T01:39:28Z")
In my ex-in-laws’ place in West Bengal, India, French toast is savory. It’s white bread dipped in an egg and spice mixture, sautéed in a pan with onions and chilis. And, in case you’re wondering - it’s pretty good. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/foods-that-are-savory-in-one-country-sweet-in-another/691352.md?page=5)