Almost nobody in Hunan has ever heard of General Tso's Chicken, the most famous Hunan dish in America. Like many other American-Chinese favorites, the roots to China are vague but interesting.

You may know the dish as General Tsuo's, or Tzo's or Tao's or some other variation. You couldn't really pronounce the name, but order it anyway at Panda Garden because of its addictiveness. Who cares if it isn't really Chinese food, like your ABC friend hinted?

General Tso's Chicken became popular in America via some enterprisingly Taiwanese chefs who opened Hunan restaurants in New York in the 1970s. Hunan cuisine is traditionally very spicy, full of smoky chilis and pickled vegetables. But to appeal to American diners, the chefs started deep-frying, and sweetening the sauces. They improved upon each other's crispy chicken dishes until they got a crunchy, sweet, sour, and mildly spicy coating. You can read more about the history in Fuchsia Dunlop's NYT article, or Jennifer 8. Lee's The Fortune Cookie Chronicles; both writers trace the original General Tso's back to Taiwan.

I grew up with two kinds of sweet and sour pork. Like any American child living in close proximity to a Chinese take-out, I ate a good amount of Ping-pong ball-sized pork laced with red food coloring and accompanied by canned pineapple. At home, my mother would also prepare her version, using bone-in chunks of pork encased flavored with a subtler orange-vinegar sauce. 

In Beijing, I once took a home-style cooking class in which the teacher revealed that her  secret ingredient for sweet and sour pork, also what "the better restaurants in Beijing use", was a bottle of locally produced ketchup. Why not the American brand Heinz? Too sweet.

Sweet and sour pork is thought to have originated in Guangdong province. But now that the Cantonese have flung themselves afar, each place they have landed has its own local variation. I'm sure Canada, the UK, Austalia, and other immigration hot spots have slightly different sweet and sour composites. 

While I sometimes complain about Chinese food in the U.S., there are certain foods and restaurants I love and miss. One such place is a tiny kosher restaurant near Boston that serves unabashedly Americanized Chinese food. The food was good in the low-brow indulgent way that Kewpie mayonnaise and powdered Milo on ice cream are good. And given the depressing state of "authentic" Chinese food in the Boston area, I ended up eating there about every other week during my college career.

Taam China was close to my very Jewish university, so it seems that everyone who patronized the restaurant either attended or graduated from the same school. I was frequently the only Asian face there other than the staff's, which probably lent the place a tiny whiff of authenticity for the duration of my meal.