It always does pay to look things up.

[conuly]

Yesterday we had stirfry, and today I finished it, and I thought - "Hm, I wonder when the word stirfry entered the English language?"

I assumed as part of this that it was a calque of the original, probably Chinese, term. But I was wrong! No, although "stirfry" as a word does characteristically look like a Chinese-to-English calque, in fact it was straight-up invented by the authors of this cookbook. (The term was, not the technique.)

*****

Here’s a story worth keeping in your knapsack.

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Comments

[moon_custafer]

Looking up the Chaos, I see they were also both noted for their sense of humour. Y. R. Chao’s recipe for eggs is reproduced at the bottom of this article: http://www.americantable.org/2013/06/buwei-yang-chao-and-the-invention-of-stir-frying/

[steorra]

"Either shell or unshell the eggs by knocking one against another in any order. * (Footnote: Since, when two eggs collide, only one of them will break, it will be necessary to use a seventh egg with which to break the sixth. If, as it may very well happen, the seventh egg breaks first instead of the sixth, an expedient will be simply to use the seventh one and put away the sixth. An alternate procedure is to delay your numbering system and define that egg as the sixth egg which breaks after the fifth egg.)"

Lovely.

[conuly]

I know! :D