"What Is...?" Wednesday

The History of the Fortune Cookie

Anyone who has been to a Chinese restaurant has had or at least seen, fortune cookies. These almond or vanilla flavored treats not only taste great, but they have a surprise inside...

a small strip of paper with a prediction or saying printed on it. The fortune cookie is a cookie with a piece of paper inside with words of supposed wisdom and/or prophecy.

The idea of fortune cookies was introduced by Makoto Hagiwara at the Japanese Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, as a refreshment to be taken while strolling the tea garden. The Hagiwara family was not business oriented and sadly there was never a patent taken out on the fortune cookie in any form. This confection is said to be based off of a Japanese food known as tsujiura senbei, which is associated with New Year festivities at Shinto Shrines.

The tsujiura senbei, several generations old, is not sweet like the fortune cookies that were designed to fit American tastes. The novel idea of receiving a fortune in a light senbei cookie is not widely known in Japan. The tsujiura senbei contains a tsujiura (a writing that tells one's fortunes) inside a senbei (Japanese crackers). This senbei is traditionally found in Kyoto.

The origins of the Fortune Cookie as we know it today were laid down by the Chinese 49'ers who worked on the building of the great American railways through the Sierra Nevada into California.

Work was very hard and pleasures were few in isolated camps, those hard workers had only biscuits with happy messages inside, to exchange at the Moon festival instead of traditional cakes with happy messages, and thus the Fortune Cookie was born. This became something of a cottage industry and as the Chinese settled in San Francisco after the railway and the Gold boom the custom continued. Today it is almost impossible to have a Chinese meal in America and Canada without finishing with a Fortune Cookie.

After WWII, a number of Americanized Chinese restaurants copied the idea. Fortune cookies became very popular, served as a dessert after every meal at many restaurants. In addition to a fortune, fortune cookies may also contain lucky numbers (used by some as lottery numbers) and a Chinese phrase with translation.

Although they are served almost exclusively in Chinese restaurants abroad, fortune cookies are almost unknown in China. Places that serve them call them "Genuine American Fortune Cookies."