The Real General Tso And How He Became The Namesake For Takeout Chicken

General Tso's crispy, tender, sweet, and sauce-covered chicken is a beloved staple on Chinese restaurant menus around the United States — and it's arguably the most famous Chinese-American dish. But emphasis should be placed on the "American" portion of that term, as General Tso's chicken is not something you'd genuinely find on a menu in China, and it's one of the many "international" dishes that were actually invented in the U.S. 

The story of General Tso's chicken isn't as simple as American chefs taking a Chinese food and messing with it, though. Its history weaves from the Hunan province in China to Taipei to New York City, where it began its takeover of American takeout menus. And, although the dish is in fact named after a military commander – one of the most successful in Chinese history – the real General Tso died long before he ever got to sample the dish that bears his name. Overall, the connection between the man and this food is actually pretty flimsy.

General Tso's chicken was invented by a Hunanese chef named Peng Chang-kuei. In the aftermath of World War II, Peng secured a job overseeing banquets held by the Chinese government, but that all ended when Mao Zedong's Chinese Communist Party took control in 1949. Peng subsequently fled to Taiwan along with members of the ousted former government. Settling in Taipei, Peng continued to cook for government banquets and purportedly invented General Tso's Chicken for a state dinner with Admiral Arthur Radford, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, in 1955.

Peng's original recipe wasn't like the General Tso's chicken you get at takeout joints in the U.S. today. It wasn't sweet, and it wasn't deep fried. So, what changed? In the early 1970s, another chef named Tsung Ting Wang, who worked at the Shun Lee Palace restaurant in New York, took a trip to Taiwan, where he dined at Peng's restaurant. Inspired by the General Tso's chicken he sampled there, Wang returned to the States and recreated it, but made it sweeter and deep-fried to suit American tastes. Not long after, Peng moved to New York himself and opened his own restaurant there, but he found that Americans had little taste for his original, more savory version of the dish.

General Tso's Chicken is named after Zuo Zongtang (also known as Tso Tsung-t'ang), who was born in Hunan province in 1812 and rose to prominence as a general for the Qing Dynasty during the Taiping Rebellion. The Taiping Rebellion was an uprising against the Qing Emperor by a religious group called Bai Shangdi Hui, or God Worshippers' Society, whose leader claimed to be the younger brother of Jesus Christ. The rebels tapped into widespread dissent among the peasant class, leading to a war that lasted from 1850 to 1864. With approximately 20 million fatalities, the Taiping Rebellion is the deadliest civil war in world history.

Zuo Zongtang shot to fame amid this bloody conflict, as he led multiple campaigns against the rebel uprising. He rose quickly through the ranks, and near the war's end, he was appointed the governor-general of two provinces, Zhejiang and Fujian, making him one of the most powerful men in China outside of the emperor himself. After the war, Zuo was appointed governor of two other provinces, Shaanxi and Gansu, to suppress rebellions by Uyghur Muslims in those areas. One of his most enduring legacies in China is securing the vast western region now known as Xinjiang, which today accounts for a full sixth of China's area. Of course, his military career has now been overshadowed by the chicken dish that bears his name, and why? Peng chose the name because he came from the same town in Hunan as General Zuo.