According to folk rumors, gluten was invented by Sun Quan. In the 13th year of Jian 'an, Cao Cao sent troops to the south, and Liu Bei was defeated, resulting in Jiangling falling into Cao Cao's hands. After Cao Cao occupied Jiangling, he wrote to Sun Quan, in which he pointed out that he would send troops to attack Soochow next. After receiving this letter, Sun Quan immediately discussed with his subordinates how to deal with it. Although some people advocated making peace with Cao Cao, Sun Quan finally decided to unite Liu Bei and Cao Cao in the first world war.

Since we have decided to fight, pre-war preparation is essential. In order to ensure the supply of grain and grass during the war, Sun Quan sent Huang Gai to transport grain and grass to the front line of the war. Huang Gai and his party were attacked by Cao Jun many times on the way to transport grain and grass, but they all resolved them one by one. Although the grain and grass did not suffer large-scale damage, its cover was cut several times after all. In fact, these cuts are not serious, but the bad thing is that it was rainy at that time, and there was a lot of rain. In the process of rainfall, some rainwater can easily penetrate into the grain and grass inside from these openings.

Huang Gai and his party didn't find this situation at first. It wasn't until one day when the weather cleared and there was a musty smell coming from the grain truck that they found that some flour had already been soaked by rain. Huang Gai dared not hide it, and immediately told Sun Quan about it. After looking at the soaked dough, Sun Quan thought it could be eaten as usual as long as it was washed with water, so his soldiers put the dough into the water and rubbed it according to his orders. As a result, the dough became another brand-new food after washing. Sun Quan saw that it was as flexible as beef tendon, so he called it gluten.

Gluten was invented by mistake in this way, and after gluten appeared, different kinds of gluten such as oil gluten and water gluten were born one after another. Among them, the birth of oil gluten is said to have been unintentionally invented by a teacher in Wuxi. Among many specialties in Wuxi, this oil gluten is one of the most famous representative specialties.