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Who doesn't love a heaping helping of the good General's chicken? We sure do, but we were just as baffled about how his name got attached to this mouth-watering dish. We skipped the egg rolls and opted to start with a search on "General Tso Chicken" instead. Our good fortune led us to a site that provided a comprehensive look at the meal and the man. According to Tso What?, the dish, consisting of "fried boneless dark-meat chicken, served with vegetables and whole dried red peppers in a sweet-spicy sauce," was invented in New York City in the mid '70s when spicy Hunan and Szechuan cuisine became popular. The site provides a lengthy bio of Tso, but offers
only a tongue-in-cheek explanation of why the dish bears his name. The site's author states the dish is usually either too spicy or too bland, and that is why it's named after an officer who fought most of his battles while suffering from dysentery, a disease characterized by severe diarrhea. Interesting theory, but we soldiered on. Next, we found a site that offered a yummy-looking recipe for General Tso Chicken but made no attempt to explain the name. The author credits Taiwanese immigrants to the United States with creating the meal, and doubts that the chicken ever passed the lips of the real General Tso. After battling through some more results, we stumbled upon a great article
from the Washington Post. The author offers a detailed history of Tso and sets forth an interesting theory. He speculates that in a display of morbid humor, exiled Chinese immigrants named the sliced up chicken after a man who executed his enemies with the "death of 10,000 cuts." Ultimately, however, we are left with no real conclusion, just a tasty meal.
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