Ch'iao-kuo were made of flour, and folklorist Kuo Li-ch'eng speculates that the "cake generals" must have been too, so it's probably not too far off to call them the ancestors of molded dough figurines.
這「巧果」是麵粉做的，民俗學者郭立誠推測，「果食將軍」必然也是麵粉做的，因此，說「果食將軍」是捏麵人的「老祖宗」，可說雖不中亦不遠矣！