Have you ever bitten into the sticky-sweet, somewhat spicy General Tso's chicken and stopped to ask why this amazingly bad-for-you (but oh-so-delicious) food is named after a supposed military figure? And whether it's a compliment?
Perhaps not surprisingly, the dinner is not an authentic Chinese dish. But General Tso was a real person, according to AllRecipes.
Known as Zuo Zongtang, he was a respected Chinese statesman and military leader of the late Qing dynasty and played an important role in the Taiping Rebellion, a civil war that was waged in China in the mid-19th century.
Still, that doesn't answer how he became associated with takeout.
The dish was actually created by a chef named Peng Chang-kueu in the 1950s, whose restaurant, Uncle Peng's Hunan Yuan, was one of the first Hunanese restaurants in the country. Peng invented the meal while in Taiwan and sweetened it when he came to the States. As the story has it, Peng was from the same town as Zongtang and that was the name that sprang to mind when it came time to name the dish.