Friday, December 02, 2016

THE CREATOR OF GENERAL TSO'S CHICKEN HAS DIED

via vice:

Chinese chef Peng Chang-kue—the guy who created General Tso's Chicken—has joined the long list of beloved people the world has lost in 2016, Taiwan Newsreports.

The chicken dish can be traced back to 1952, when Peng first whipped up the golden ginger-garlic delight for a US Naval admiral named Arthur W. Rutherford. Rutherford asked Peng what the meal was called, and, in a stroke of inspiration, the chef decided to name it after respected Hunan war general Tso Tsung T'ang. The rest is history.

In 1973, Peng brought the recipe stateside and founded Peng's Garden Hunan Restaurant in New York City. Not too long after that, General Tso's got a rave review in the New York Times, deeming it a "stir‐fried masterpiece." Someone even made a documentary about the dish in 2014, The Search for General Tso, which talks about the origin story of the chicken masterpiece and the effect it has had on taste buds all across the world.

According to the Taiwan News, Peng died on Tuesday of pneumonia at the age of 98.

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