The Formidable Mrs. Chao (How One Woman Brought Chinese Food to Every Home in America)

The riveting, extraordinary story of the woman who brought Chinese stir-fry to America—and forever changed culinary history.

Never heard of Buwei Yang Chao? What about stir-fry? Well, then you’ve had Mrs. Chao’s cooking.

Let us introduce you to The Formidable Mrs. Chao, the story of a woman born in China in the late 1800s—so long ago that her feet were bound when she was a child—who went on to bring Chinese food to homes across America. Her bestselling book How to Cook and Eat in Chinese, published in 1945 with an introduction by Pearl S. Buck, transformed our understanding of Chinese food from the likes of chop suey to real Chinese techniques and ingredients. She coined the term stir-fry and, later, potstickers.

Before she was a bestselling author, Mrs. Chao was many other kinds of formidable. One of China’s first female physicians, she opened the nation’s first birth control clinic, then married a brilliant linguist (after breaking off her arranged marriage!) and traveled with him around the world. Mother to three daughters, she really began cooking Chinese food for her family in America.

A thrilling account of one woman’s journey through extraordinary times and how she helped shape them, Jen Lin-Liu’s The Formidable Mrs. Chao is a story of war, exile, immigration, and prejudice; of women and the struggles they face to balance family and ambitions; of cooking as a salve for trauma, a means of expression, and a form of freedom. It’s a Chinese story and an American story. It’s a love story and the story of a very independent woman. And it is written with verve and devotion (and recipes!) by a renowned food writer who is a chef and mother herself.