No meal in a Chinese restaurant has ever been complete without the complimentary fortune cookie that usually accompanies the bill. Ignoring the bill for a moment, eager hands crack open the cookie and unfurl that tiny strip of white paper from within. Happily munching on the sweet and crunchy pieces of cookie that have revealed their prize, we read the fortune to ourselves and to others at the table, reveling in promises of riches and good luck, or taking a moment or two to reflect upon printed words of wisdom.
Acts such as this are an unspoken tradition performed by any and all who have visited and dined at Chinese restaurants, and have become a part of the history of the fortune cookie, whose humble beginnings likely never foretold how popular such a tiny little treat would become.
The fortune cookie we are all familiar with today finds its origins in the early 1900s in America, and is credited as being the creation of Makota Hagiwara, whose cookies bore thank you notes rather than fortunes. Unveiled to the mass public in San Francisco in 1915, this event helped San Francisco earn the title “the fortune cookie capital of the world”, according to some sources and records.
However, other accounts place the origin of the fortune cookie in the hands of David Jung, a Cantonese baker in Los Angeles in 1920. According to history, it was David Jung who first put fortunes into the cookies, along with encouraging words and phrases that were used to life the spirits of the homeless and the poor. David Jung went on to build the Hong Kong Noodle Company and began mass producing the fortune cookies for national consumption.
The basis for the creation of the fortune cookie actually began some time in the 12th century, when the Chinese would hide small slips of paper bearing important messages inside small cakes called Moon Cakes. These messages were kept safely hidden from the Mongolians, as they did not care for the taste of the Chinese cakes.
Up until the 1960s, fortune cookies were painstakingly made by hand. When Edward Louie, founder of the Lotus Fortune Cookie Company invented a machine that could handle the production of fortune cookies much more efficiently and mechanically, the fortune cookie industry exploded.
Today, the modern fortune cookie can contain anything from Bible verses to the wisdom of Confucius, messages of romance to promises of happiness, and much more. Variations of the fortune cookie can sometimes be found, such as different flavors or colors, but the original, golden-colored vanilla fortune cookie is still the most popular.
Making your own fortune cookies is not that difficult but it can be time consuming. You can find a number of traditional fortune cookie recipes at the Fancy Fortune Cookies, which explains the process in great detail. In addition to the regular fortune cookie recipe, you’ll also find a few fortune cookie recipe variations. There are also a number of flavorful fortune cookie creations available for purchase, in original, fruit, and exotic flavors.
