Chow mein in Australia is a monotonal mush that you would cook with the express purpose of annoying the convalescent. It looks terrible and most of the components – rice, cabbage, celery, carrot, onions – are cooked to a nigh on uniform texture. If anything retains the last vestiges of their original consistency then the chow mein requires more boiling. The other key ingredients, a packet of chicken noodle soup, Keen's brand curry powder and light soy sauce, provide the MSG umaminess and salt hit that makes the dish worthwhile. This is not the chow mein that the rest of the world eats but is nonetheless, delicious.

Australian chow mein bears currently no resemblance whatsoever to American or Chinese chow mein. Crispy, deep-fried noodles in a starchy sauce are the dominant elements of both the US and Southern Chinese styles; noodles only appear in the Australian version as a corollary of chicken noodle soup rather than as a main carbohydrate. In the US, chow mein remains available in restaurants where in Australia, it is primarily a home-cooked food.

So how did chow mein become a uniquely Australian food that is also of Asian origin, like the Australian dim sim or Chiko rolls?

My original theory was that chow mein in Australia was like chop suey – a dish that was imported with Chinese and American miners (from America, where it was popularised) some time during the late 1880s and early 1890s - but survived in Australia where chop suey failed. Writing in The Argus on 21 September 1929, John Owen writes of a mythical visitor to Melbourne "down from the country for a week’s holiday, and determined in that week to see the best that the city has to offer". Amongst the restaurant recommendations, Owen suggests:

The next two nights he spends paying visits to some of the Chinese and Continental restaurants in the neighbourhood of Russell and Bourke Streets. Here, for a small sum, he procures strange Chinese foods, probably choosing one of the two well known dishes, chicken chop suey or chicken chow mein

It appears that by the late 1920s, chow mein was a well established dish in Australia; that it was mentioned in the same breath as chop suey suggests that it was held in equal esteem and possibly, the only other well known Chinese dish in Australia. At some point in the 1940-1950s, Chinese restaurants in Australia stopped cooking chop suey and chow mein. Today it is a very rare restaurant that serves either or both as a part of their menu but chow mein has lived on in Australian home kitchens.

My only theory is that chow mein was reintroduced in Australia with the Margaret Fulton-spurred wave of Chinese home cooking in Australia in the late 1950s and 1960s. Possibly, the addition of chicken noodle soup happened as a suggestion by a chicken noodle soup manufacturer (the brand Continental manufactures a "Chow Mein Mince" recipe base in Australia and New Zealand) or as a recipe in a popular women's magazine. The mix of mirepoix and cheap cabbage, mince and packet food smells like vintage Women's Weekly.

Does anyone have a less apocryphal Australian chow mein history?