Q: How do you make a Chinese egg roll? A: Just give it a little push!\nWhat do you think is the punchline of the above joke?
Explanation: Many families will be celebrating Easter this weekend, so an egg joke seemed appropriate.
A Chinese egg roll is a type of food served at many Chinese restaurants (and they are really good). In the name of this food, ‘roll’ is a thing (a noun); the words before ‘roll’ tell what type of roll (adjectives): an egg roll, a Chinese egg roll.
Roll is also a verb that describes what a wheel does as it turns (it rolls) or what a rock does as it goes down a hill (it rolls). If you push an egg, it will roll. This will happen to an egg from anywhere such as China or France or Peru.
This joke is funny because it creates an expectation for one type of answer, but it gives a different answer. When you hear the question, how do you make a Chinese egg roll, you expect the answer to include instructions, perhaps a recipe, about one of my favorite foods–egg rolls. What you get is a funny answer because, of course, if you push an egg, it will roll.
Here is an egg rolling contest from Iowa: