NEW YORK — The chef credited with inventing General Tso’s Chicken, a world-famous Chinese dish smothered in a sweet sauce that was never a staple in China, has died in Taiwan at 98.

Peng Chang-kuei died of pneumonia last Wednesday in Taipei, his son, Chuck Peng, said. He was still cooking in the family’s Taipei restaurant kitchen just a few months ago.

Peng first brought the sticky, sweet and spicy dish to New York about 40 years ago.

It’s now on Chinese restaurant menus across the United States, exploding in popularity after President Nixon visited China in 1972. The dish also reportedly became a favorite of famed statesman Henry Kissinger, who with Nixon helped open the communist country to the West, spotlighting its culture and food.

But General Tso’s chicken was never part of the Chinese culinary tradition.

The chef created the dish in the 1950s in Taiwan, where he fled in 1949 with Chiang Kai-shek after the communists took over, said Chuck Peng, speaking from his home in Taipei.

In Taiwan, the chef helped welcome the commander of the U.S. Navy’s 7th Fleet in the Pacific with a banquet that included the new culinary creation named after a 19th-century Chinese military leader from Peng’s native Hunan Province.