Logan Delaney 4/30/12 History/Philosophy

The History of the Fortune Cookie: An American Invention with Japanese Roots This paper topic came up because I attempted to make fortune cookies for our class with I Ching Hexagrams on pieces of paper instead of the typical faux-prophetic fortunes typically sandwiched within the folded cookie. This project failed miserably, due to the dough which was too thick to fold without the cookie crumbling. So instead of enjoying an edible final project, you can read my short biography on the history of the fortune cookie! The Japanese Tea Garden located in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco is reported to have been the first place in the world to serve the most current form of the fortune cookie near the end of the 19th Century. Japanese Tea Gardens, huh? Are these cookies Japanese or Chinese? The precursor to the modern fortune cookie comes from the Shinto temple practice of random fortunes, or omikuji. The Japanese version of the cookie differs in several ways: they are a little bit larger; are made of darker dough; and their batter contains sesame and miso and is more savory in flavor. Instead of the fortune being folded inside the cookie, the Japanese slipped the paper into the lip of the cookie. This kind of cookie is still sold in parts of Japan, and at some Shinto Shrines Fortune cookies were originally made by hand until the 1950s when Shuck Yee in Oakland, CA industrialized the process, creating a machine, allowing for mass production of fortune cookies. In mass production the price of the fortune cookie dropped from the original handmade price, permitting Chinese restaurants to pick them up as a novelty item. The custom spread through out the United States and was picked up in Europe as well. Ironically the Chinese Fortune Cookie was introduced to China in 1989when the cookies were imported into Hong Kong and purchased with the title "Genuine American Fortune Cookies." The fortune cookie business never reached success in China and disappeared from China 3 years after their original import, because critics heralded it "too American.