https://www.inverse.com/article/30145-szechuan-sauce-rick-and-morty-mulan-mcdonald-s No.91559768 Report >After a 19-year period of obscurity, McDonald’s Szechuan sauce was thrust back into the cultural spotlight after being featured in the Rick and Morty Season 3 premiere on April 1. New and old fans of the sauce, which originally graced McDonald’s menus when Disney’s Mulan premiered in 1998, noted that the upcoming release of the live-action remake of the beloved animated film would present the perfect opportunity to bring the sauce back
>But doing so would be a mistake
>In fact, rolling out Szechuan sauce with the original Mulan was itself problematic, though critics were less aware, then, of how the film collapsed millennia of complex Chinese history and culture into a flat, oversimplified pastiche. Maybe they just cared less. Either way, it’s not surprising that the country’s elaborate cuisine and varied flavor profiles were likewise distilled into that catch-all sweet-spicy-sour Chinese condiment — the aforementioned Szechuan sauce — and served up alongside all-American chicken McNuggets
>Clamoring for the simultaneous release of Szechuan sauce and a film inspired by a sixth-century Chinese folktale is the same as asking for Mickey D’s to serve up a rich Hollandaise or Béarnaise in honor of the quintessentially French Beauty and the Beast. Delicious as that situation might be, it has nothing to do with the roots of the legend it purports to celebrate. French cuisine is lauded for its geographical nuances (Normandy gave birth to Hollandaise, while Béarnaise is Parisian; three other French “mother sauces” exist), and reducing it into a single flavor profile would be viewed as disrespectful by home cooks and connoisseurs alike. Because it is
>The same goes for thinking Szechuan sauce could represent all of China — Sichuan (the traditional spelling) is just one of the country’s 34 provinces — but it’s obvious that this instance of cultural and culinary reductionism doesn’t seem to hold as much weight. It’s not hard to imagine why
