General Tso's chicken (; ) is a sweet and spicy

deep-fried Deep frying (also referred to as deep fat frying) is a cooking method in which food is submerged in hot fat, traditionally lard but today most commonly oil, as opposed to the shallow oil used in conventional frying done in a frying pan. Normal ...

chicken dish that is served in North American Chinese restaurants. The dish is named after

Zuo Zongtang Zuo Zongtang, Marquis Kejing ( also spelled Tso Tsung-t'ang; ; November 10, 1812 – September 5, 1885), sometimes referred to as General Tso, was a Chinese statesman and military leader of the late Qing dynasty. Born in Xiangyin County ...

, formerly romanized "Tso Tsung-t'ang", a

Qing dynasty The Qing dynasty ( ), officially the Great Qing,, was a Manchu-led imperial dynasty of China and the last orthodox dynasty in Chinese history. It emerged from the Later Jin dynasty founded by the Jianzhou Jurchens, a Tungusic-speak ...

statesman and military leader, although the dish has no recorded connection to Zuo nor is the dish known in Zuo's home province,

Hunan Hunan (, ; ) is a landlocked province of the People's Republic of China, part of the South Central China region. Located in the middle reaches of the Yangtze watershed, it borders the province-level divisions of Hubei to the north, Jiangxi to ...

Name and origins

The dish has been associated with Zuo Zongtang (Tso Tsung-t'ang) (1812–1885), a

statesman and military leader from

Hunan Province Hunan (, ; ) is a landlocked province of the People's Republic of China, part of the South Central China region. Located in the middle reaches of the Yangtze watershed, it borders the province-level divisions of Hubei to the north, Jiangxi t ...

, but Zuo could not have eaten the dish or known of it. Text available a
WiredNewYork.com
/ref> The dish is found neither in

Changsha Changsha (; ; ; Changshanese pronunciation: (), Standard Mandarin pronunciation: ) is the capital and the largest city of Hunan Province of China. Changsha is the 17th most populous city in China with a population of over 10 million, an ...

, the capital of Hunan Province, nor in Xiangyin County, where Zuo was born. Moreover, Zuo's descendants, who are still living in Xiangyin County, when interviewed, said that they had never heard of such a dish. There are several stories concerning the origin of the dish.

Eileen Yin-Fei Lo Eileen Yin-Fei Lo (May 4, 1937 – November 13, 2022) was a chef. She authored eleven cookbooks on Chinese cuisine. Early life and education China Lo was born in Shun Tak, a district of Guangdong, China. At the age of five, she began to cook wh ...

states in her book ''The Chinese Kitchen'' that the dish originates from a simple Hunan chicken dish and that the reference to "''Zongtang''" was not a reference to Zuo Zongtang's given name, but rather a reference to the homonym "''zongtang'' (宗堂)", meaning "ancestral meeting hall". Consistent with this interpretation, the dish name is sometimes (but considerably less commonly) found in Chinese as 左宗棠雞 (''Chung tong gai'' is transliterated from

Jyutping Jyutping is a romanisation system for Cantonese developed by the Linguistic Society of Hong Kong (LSHK), an academic group, in 1993. Its formal name is the Linguistic Society of Hong Kong Cantonese Romanization Scheme. The LSHK advocates for ...

; ''Zuǒ Zōngtáng jī'' is transliterated from

Hanyu Pinyin Hanyu Pinyin (), often shortened to just pinyin, is the official romanization system for Standard Mandarin Chinese in China, and to some extent, in Singapore and Malaysia. It is often used to teach Mandarin, normally written in Chinese for ...

). The dish or its variants are known by a number of variant names, including:

Peng Chang-kuei claim

Fuchsia Dunlop Fuchsia Dunlop is an English writer and cook who specialises in Chinese cuisine, especially Sichuan cuisine. She is the author of five books, including the autobiographical ''Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper'' (2008). According to Julia Moskin in ...

argues that the recipe was invented by

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the nort ...

-based Hunan cuisine chef Peng Chang-kuei,"The Curious History of General Tso's Chicken"
, ''

Salon Salon may refer to: Common meanings * Beauty salon, a venue for cosmetic treatments * French term for a drawing room, an architectural space in a home * Salon (gathering), a meeting for learning or enjoyment Arts and entertainment * Salon (P ...

'' who had been an apprentice of Cao Jingchen (), a leading early 20th-century Chinese chef. Peng was the Nationalist government's banquet chef and fled with

Kuomintang The Kuomintang (KMT), also referred to as the Guomindang (GMD), the Nationalist Party of China (NPC) or the Chinese Nationalist Party (CNP), is a major political party in the Republic of China, initially on the Chinese mainland and in Tai ...

forces to Taiwan during the

Chinese Civil War The Chinese Civil War was fought between the Kuomintang-led government of the Republic of China and forces of the Chinese Communist Party, continuing intermittently since 1 August 1927 until 7 December 1949 with a Communist victory on m ...

. There he continued his career as official chef until 1973, when he moved to

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States New York may also refer to: Film and television * '' ...

to open a restaurant. One new dish, General Tso's chicken, was originally prepared without sugar and subsequently altered to suit the tastes of "non-Hunanese people". The popularity of the dish has led to it being adopted by local Hunanese chefs and food writers. When Peng opened a restaurant in Hunan in the 1990s introducing General Tso's chicken, the restaurant closed without success, as the locals found the dish too sweet. Peng's Restaurant on East 44th Street in New York City claims that it was the first restaurant in the city to serve General Tso's chicken. Since the dish (and cuisine) was new, Peng made it the house specialty in spite of the dish's commonplace ingredients. A review of Peng's in 1977 mentions that their "General Tso's chicken was a stir-fried masterpiece, sizzling hot both in flavor and temperature". Peng died from

pneumonia Pneumonia is an inflammatory condition of the lung primarily affecting the small air sacs known as alveoli. Symptoms typically include some combination of productive or dry cough, chest pain, fever, and difficulty breathing. The severity ...

in November 2016 at 98 years old.

Wang claim

New York's

Shun Lee Palace Shun Lee Palace is a Chinese restaurant located at 155 East 55th Street, between Lexington Avenue and Third Avenue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City. It claims to be the birthplace of orange beef. It opened in 1971. One year later, Shun Lee ...

s, located at East (155 E. 55th St.) and West (43 W. 65th St.), also claims that it was the first restaurant to serve General Tso's chicken and that it was invented by a Chinese immigrant chef named T. T. Wang in 1972. Michael Tong, owner of New York's Shun Lee Palaces, says "We opened the first Hunanese restaurant in the whole country, and the four dishes we offered you will see on the menu of practically every Hunanese restaurant in America today. They all copied from us." It has also been argued that the two stories can be somewhat reconciled in that the current General Tso's chicken recipe — where the meat is crispy fried — was introduced by Chef Wang but as "General Ching's chicken", a name which still has trace appearances on menus on the Internet (the identity of its namesake "General Ching" is, however, unclear); whereas the name "General Tso's chicken" can be traced to Chef Peng, who cooked it in a different way. These competing claims are discussed in the 2014

documentary film A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional film, motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a Recorded history, historical record". Bill Nichols (film critic), Bil ...

The Search for General Tso ''The Search for General Tso'' is a documentary film that premiered at the 2014 Tribeca Film Festival. It was directed by Ian Cheney and produced by Amanda Murray and Jennifer 8. Lee. Sundance Selects acquired it in December 2014, and was released ...

'', which also traces how the history of Chinese immigration into the US parallels the development of a unique Chinese-American or

American Chinese cuisine American Chinese cuisine is a cuisine derived from Chinese cuisine that was developed by Chinese Americans. The dishes served in many North American Chinese restaurants are adapted to American tastes and often differ significantly from those ...

Recipes

Traditional basic ingredients include: * Sauce: soy sauce, rice wine, rice-wine vinegar, sugar, cornstarch, dried red chili peppers (whole), garlic. * Batter / breading: egg, cornstarch. * Dish: broccoli, chicken dark meat (cubed).

Regional differences

The

Taiwanese Taiwanese may refer to: * Taiwanese language, another name for Taiwanese Hokkien * Something from or related to Taiwan ( Formosa) * Taiwanese aborigines, the indigenous people of Taiwan * Han Taiwanese, the Han people of Taiwan * Taiwanese people, ...

restaurant Peng Chang-kuei also serves the dish and is credited by some sources as the inventor of the dish. Differences between this Taiwanese dish and that commonly encountered in North America are that it is not sweet in flavor, the chicken is cooked with its skin and that soy sauce plays a much more prominent role.
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