Crab raccoon
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From the menu of a Chinese restaurant in Eden Prairie, MN:
Because they are printed in black against a dark background, it is difficult to read the Chinese characters for the name of the dish, which are right below the English name:
sūzhà xièjiǎo
酥炸蟹腳
"crispy fried crab legs"
It's actually worse than you thought.
First of all, the literal name of the dish is
sūzhà xièjiǎo
蘇炸蟹角
"crispy fried crab horns"
The confusion between "legs" and "horns" is due to the perfect homophony between jiǎo 角 ("horn"), the shape of the appetizer, and jiǎo 腳 ("leg"), its most distinctive ingredient. Other ingredients are wonton wrapper, cream cheese, scallions, and garlic. The "crab legs" may come by way of genuine crab meat or imitation crab meat.
You can't see the whole name of the dish more clearly as printed in white to the left on the menu, but the last character is unmistakably jiǎo 腳 ("leg"), which is technically wrong, because it should be jiǎo 角 ("horn").
More remarkable still is the fact that the last six letters of the white printing of the English name to the left indicates the correct spelling: Rangoons, though the singular "Rangoon" would be even more idiomatically correct.
Crab Rangoon, sometimes called crab puffs, crab rangoon puffs, cheese wontons, or cream cheese rangoons, are filled crisp dumpling appetizers served primarily in American Chinese restaurants.
The filling is made with a combination of cream cheese, crab meat or imitation crab meat, scallions or onion, garlic, and other flavorings. A small amount of the filling is wrapped in each wonton wrapper. The dumpling is then shaped by either folding the wrapper over into a triangle, by creating a four-pointed star, by gathering it up into a flower or purse shape, or by twisting it into the traditional wonton shape.
The appetizers are cooked to crispness by deep-frying in vegetable oil or by baking. They can be served hot or cold. In North America, crab rangoon is often served with a sauce for dipping such as soy sauce, plum sauce, duck sauce, sweet and sour sauce, or a hot mustard sauce.
So Crab Rangoon is as Chinese American as chop suey, Chun King or La Choy Chow Mein crispy noodles in a can, General Tso's chicken, and, of course, fortune cookies!! Whoever heard of true Chinese cooking with (Philadelphia!) cream cheese.
But where did it get its odd name, Crab Rangoon?
Crab rangoon was on the menu of the "Polynesian-style" restaurant Trader Vic's in Beverly Hills in 1955 and in San Francisco since at least 1956. Although the appetizer has the name of the Burmese city of Rangoon, now known by Burmese as 'Yangon', the dish was probably invented in the United States by Chinese-American chef Joe Young working under Victor Bergeron, founder of Trader Vic's. A "Rangoon crab a la Jack" was mentioned as a dish at a Hawaiian-style party in 1952 but without further detail and so may or may not be the same thing.
Although cream cheese was a staple of 1940s and 1950s American cuisine, it is not found in Chinese or Burmese cuisine.
They may be referred to as crab puffs, crab pillows, crab cheese wontons, or cheese wontons.
(source — also for the above quotation)
I think the "rangoon" part of the name is an attempt to make the appetizer seem Asian-exotic, and that it perhaps morphed away from "wonton". Just a guess, as wild as the dish itself.
Selected readings
- "Wonton in Zanthoxylum schinifolium etzucc sauce" (5/6/15) — Sichuan peppercorn, in extenso
- "Wanton soup" (1/5/15)
- "Wantan soup for überman hubby" (3/15/14)
- "Not post-colonial enough?" (4/14/08)
- "Fun with pronunciation guides" (6/5/08)
[Thanks to Victor Steinbok]
F said,
September 2, 2024 @ 12:39 am
Not to be confused with the crab-eating raccoon.
AntC said,
September 2, 2024 @ 1:26 am
Whoever heard of true Chinese cooking with (Philadelphia!) cream cheese.
Indeed. The more I read on about the ingredients, the less Chinese it seemed.
I'm pretty sure I'm allergic to cream cheese in Chinese cookery.
Philip Taylor said,
September 2, 2024 @ 2:33 am
Image level-adjusted for easier reading of the Hanzi — https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/5xf0rvd783079nznid63b/crabracoon.jpg?rlkey=hiwuphxwdt7bkclgwz3uya3h6&dl=0
Jenny Chu said,
September 2, 2024 @ 3:21 am
One interesting phenomenon is the meme-ification of crab rangoon. I went to my share of Chinese-American restaurants in the 1970s-1990s, but never came across this. Then, I moved to Asia and was insulated from what might be happening at Chinese-American restaurants in the interim. Hence, the first time I heard of crab rangoon was via my Gen Z children. It seemed to peak about 3-4 years ago but is now safely in the meme canon.
https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/eazlc0/what_is_up_with_the_crab_rangoon_meme_where_did/
katarina said,
September 2, 2024 @ 10:46 am
I always feel indignant when the American-Chinese dish (deep-fried or stir-fried) "shrimp with walnuts" appears slathered – proudly – with mayonnaise. After being surprised once I have never ordered it again but still encounter it at parties held in restaurants. I wish it were banned. It's an indignity to Chinese cuisine.
katarina said,
September 2, 2024 @ 11:11 am
Not crazy about "shrimp with walnuts" without mayonnaise either. Shrimp is perfect by itself (or with some ginger, garlic, and scallions) , why add toasted walnuts ? Never had shrimp-with-walnuts in China or Hong Kong when I was growing up. Perhaps that too is an American-Chinese invention.
Yves Rehbein said,
September 2, 2024 @ 3:18 pm
I wonderd if Rangoon rather than Burmese Yangon must be related to Tom-Yum-Goong, the martial arts movie with Tony Jaa.
That's ต้มยำกุ้ง with กุ้ง (gûng) "shrimp" in Thai. Splendid movie, named after a national dish. As a kraut, I am pretty sour the pun is lost on me.
Chris Button said,
September 2, 2024 @ 8:52 pm
Rangoon and Yangon are the same word. It's a Bombay/Mumbai, Peking/Beijing kinda thing.
Incidentally, Myanmar and Burma go back to the same word too.
maidhc said,
September 3, 2024 @ 2:51 am
There's a Chinese restaurant we go to quite often, basically Cantonese-style. I don't have the background to say how authentic it is, but it's near a university, and a lot of the customers appear to be Chinese or Chinese-American students. We've been working our way through the very extensive menu, and most of the dishes have been very tasty.
However we ordered something called "chicken with walnuts", and it turned out to be deep-fried chicken in a cloyingly sweet sauce. We asked them why they didn't warn us about it, but they said "some people really like it".
I don't know if walnuts is a bad sign. We've had other dishes with peanuts or cashews that were fine. I've learned that when reading Yelp reviews, when someone says "We ordered the walnut shrimp" it's a sign to stop reading, akin to "I've never tried Ethiopian food before, but …" But are walnuts in general something to steer clear of?
Trader Vic's was an interesting phenomenon. I was more familiar with one of the imitators, Don the Beachcomber, which was located closer to home. Not "authentic" in any way, but corny and kind of fun. I miss them now they're gone. But I sure wouldn't order anything with cream cheese.
Robert Coren said,
September 3, 2024 @ 9:31 am
I would have thought that "racoon" was an auto-"correction" using a dictionary in which "Rangoon" does not appear, but that would not explain why even the substitute word is misspelled.
I visited Myanmar in 2013, and I vaguely recall being told that initial "r" does not occur in Burmese, and the British version of the city's name was more or less inexplicable.
Chris Button said,
September 3, 2024 @ 1:51 pm
@ Robert Cohen
Onset "r" has merged with "y" in common Burmese. The "r" still exists in a few varieties though and, of course, in very closely related Rakhine.
Chas Belov said,
September 4, 2024 @ 2:07 am
Oddly, the first time I encountered General Tso's Chicken it was on a Chinese-only blackboard menu, as 左公鷄 if I remember correctly, in San Francisco Chinatown.
Chris Button said,
September 4, 2024 @ 8:38 am
Actually, it might only be Rakhine (Arakanese) that retains the "r" onset.
Victor Mair said,
September 4, 2024 @ 12:25 pm
From Julian Wheatley:
Many thanks, Victor, for the Crab Rangoon / Raccoon language log entries. More grist for my mill: I have been trying to convince friends here (in New Orleans) that, even though Burma is known for its soft-shelled crabs (it used to export tons), Crab Rangoon is not a proper Chinese dish and has nothing to do with Rangoon (whose waters are now far too polluted for crab harvesting). But the dish has too much appeal to the western palate for me to win the point – and inevitably, it appears as an hors d'oeuvre. Americans love crispy!
Aside: The British encountered Burma from the western coasts, via Arakan / now Rakhine (where initial "r" has survived) and Tenasserim / now Tanintharyi (where there are suggestive cases of the sort of m~b variation which, as Chris Button noted are at the root of the Burma ~ Myanmar variants; the annoying final "r" in the latter signals only the vowel quality). Rather tenuous, but there is Mergui in the far south of Tenasserim, pronounced [mjeɪʔ] or [beɪʔ] in Burmese. Incidentally, even in standard Burmese – at least among educated speakers likely to use such words – initial "r" survives in certain loanwords from English and Indic.
P.S. Our Pyu issue of Journal of Burma Studies appeared at last, which includes Miyake and Wheatley's rather desperate
attempt to crack some Pyu monolingual inscriptions.
katarina said,
September 4, 2024 @ 1:24 pm
I grew up speaking Mandarin and Cantonese at home and English in school.
As a schoolgirl years ago, was puzzled why Burma was Miandian in Mandarin and Burma in English, and why Rangoon was Yeunggong in Cantonese (Yangguang in Mandarin), why Greece was
Heila (in Cantonese.), Xila (Sheela in Mandarin).
When very young didn't know that De Goo (De Country) was Germany (Deutchland).
Chris Button said,
September 4, 2024 @ 8:34 pm
John Okell's (1995) study of three Burmese dialects (Arakanese, Tavoyan and Intha) has two interesting observations about Intha regarding /r/:
1. /r/ occurred initially in only one word in his material: the common word /rai'/ "to strike"
2. Medial /l/ and /r/ both exist (like Old Burmese) but they do not contrast with each other (unlike Old Burmese). Informants said that "the -r- allophone is used for greater strength and vividness, and so is more common in male than female speech."
Chris Button said,
September 5, 2024 @ 6:05 pm
Tom said,
September 5, 2024 @ 6:12 pm
@maidhc
Walnuts often appear in sweet dishes.
https://www.tasteofhome.com/collection/walnut-recipes/
This list of 46 walnut recipes has only 2 that are not fundamentally sweet, and of those 2 one includes blue cheese. This strongly suggests to me that walnuts have a quality that invites sweetening. When I eat walnuts plain, I find they often have slightly unpleasant bitter flavors. I suspect these are obscured/balanced by sweetening (or adding blue cheese).
Victor Mair said,
September 9, 2024 @ 7:08 pm
Just ran by King's Buffet in Rock Springs and stopped in to see what they had. Was elated that they had crispy Crab Rangoon and Cheese Wonton right next to each other.