Question about Oriental cuisine?

The below answers are diversent. The basic difference is whether the roll is dipped in egg batter before deep frying. Both rolls are deep fried under most circumstances, for the crispy shell on the outside.....

What’s the Difference?: Egg Roll vs. Spring Roll
by Maggie - March 26, 2007 - 12:13 PM

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The Dilemma: You find yourself at a Chinese restaurant craving cylindrical food. But of which variety?

Who You Can Impress: All the folks down at Hunan Garden. No longer do you need to hang your head in shame!

The Quick Trick: If it’s got a shell like a deep fried tortilla, it’s probably an egg roll. And if you’re thinking that deep frying tortillas is awfully American for Chinese food, you’re onto something.

The Reason: The main gustatory difference between a spring roll and its egg cousin is that spring rolls have thin, often translucent flour wrappers and usually aren’t fried, while egg rolls have thicker, deep-fried wrappings. Also, spring rolls in America are often filled with carrots and bamboo, while egg rolls are more likely to be filled with meat and bean shoots. Oh, and one other difference: Spring rolls are Chinese; egg rolls probably aren’t.
In fact, Chinese cuisine in America is so vastly different from Chinese cuisine in China that many American Chinese restaurants advertise, beneath their English names, the words “Westernized Food” in Chinese.

halongrolls.jpgIn the 19th century, the primary audience for Chinese food was railroad workers, a group of people not widely known for their sophisticated palates. Chinese restaurateurs sought to accommodate both Chinese immigrants working the rails and their white coworkers—and in doing so created “fusion cuisine” long before it was hip. While some argue that egg rolls existed in China prior to their appearance in America, many food scholars believe that the egg roll is an American original. Besides the legendary roll, there are many staples of American Chinese food you’ll rarely if ever see in China: fried rice, crab Rangoon, chow mein, sweet and sour pork, and General Tso’s chicken. Also, fortune cookies (see sidebar). What do all these meals have in common? Frying, which is a staple of American Chinese food but somewhat less important in authentic Chinese cuisine.

As for the spring roll, though, around the late 1980s, Americans began to turn against the very Chinese food they’d helped to invent. No longer could we afford to eat deep-fried, high-sodium foods slathered in MSG. And so more authentic Chinese restaurants started popping up, and with them came the reemergence of the light and healthy spring roll. American Chinese cuisine still dominates the market in small towns, but the number of authentic restaurants grows every year.

Another opinion from Wikipedia

An egg roll is made by wrapping a combination of chopped vegetables (often mostly cabbage), meat, and sometimes noodles, in a sheet of dough, dipping the dough in egg or an egg wash, then deep frying it. It can be closed or open ended

When compared with its cousin, the spring roll, the egg roll is generally larger; has a thicker, puffier skin; is crunchier; and has more filling than the spring roll. However, the terms "spring roll" and "egg roll" are often used somewhat interchangeably. The egg roll dough is wheat-based while the spring roll is sometimes rice-based.

I think the veggies inside are different too. I think spring rolls are supposed to have things that are more available in the spring.

Spring rolls can be fresh or fried. They usually have rice based wrappers and egg rolls have wheat based wrappers. Egg rolls tend to be more round/fat than spring rolls which are usually narrow.

Spring rolls are made w/ a Rice Paper kind of wrapping and the egg rolls are made w/ dough.

And one is Thai and the other Chinese

Egg rolls are typically fried and spring rolls are fresh and are usually wrapped in thin rice paper.

In Chinese,
Eggroll - 蛋卷 - sweet, usually eaten as a snack or dessert
Spring Roll - 春卷 - deep fried rolls that you get in Chinese dimsum restaurants. Usually eaten during breakfast or lunch.

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If you want to know the difference between egg rolls and spring rolls served in Americanized Chinese restaurants, then they are basically the same...just different ways of naming it...