Cultural Topic #8 Fortune Cookies

Fortune cookies, the iconic and stereotypical Chinese dessert. Thay are found at every Chinese restaurant the world over. Credited as a purely American invention and completely nonexistent in China, thees little cookies are surprisingly Japaneses in origin. 

    The fortune cookie we know today is small, sweet, crisp and packed with a cute saying. It is much diffident than its Japaneses cousin. Called tsujiura senbei thay where made as early as the late 18th century in the city of Kyoto. They are bigger and browner, as their batter contains sesame and miso rather than vanilla and butter. The fortunes are not stuffed inside, but are pinched in the cookie’s fold.  You can still fined them today being made by hand in small family bakerys in the Kyoto neighborhood of Fushimi Inari-taisha shrine.
  

Japaneses Senbei left and Americana Fortune Cookie right 

  Thay did not make the transition from savory to sweet until thay where introduced to the United states in the in late 1800's Benkyodo bakery in San Francisco and where not popularized until 1907.  Mr. Makoto Hgiwara is credited as the first person in the U.S. to have served the modern version of the cookie when he did so at the Golden Gate Park's Japanese tea garden in 1890.

   The production of fortune cookies moved from Japanese American community  to the Chinese American sometime around World War II due to the forced Japanese American internment. Thay where served in California Chinese restaurants as a regional         specialty until the end of the war. When they were encountered by military personnel on the way back from the Pacific Theater. When the men returned home, they would ask their local Chinese restaurants why they didn't serve fortune cookies as the San Francisco restaurants did. This lead to the spread of fortune cookies across the U.S. and ultimately  the world.

To put it simply thay where   "introduced by the Japanese, popularized by the Chinese, but ultimately ... consumed by Americans." -Lee, Jennifer  2012

                                                    VIDEO: A Cookie's Origins                    

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