The commonly held notion that Fortune Cookies were invented in China typically comes from

the fact that they are primarily served in Americanized Chinese restaurants. However,

you will not find fortune cookies in actual Chinese restaurants, nor will you find historical

records of a similar food item in China. The largest manufacturer of fortune cookies, Wonton

Food, based in New York, even once tried to introduce fortune cookies to the Chinese in

the late 1980s. After three years, they gave up, as they simply weren't a popular food

item there. Most people, who know they were not invented

in China, typically think they were invented in America, which is reasonable enough, considering

they are primarily consumed in America. This is closer to the truth, but still not quite

there. The various people who are often credited as having invented fortune cookies, in almost

all credible cases, were Japanese immigrants to America. Thus, fortune cookies are sometimes

humorously referred to as “A Chinese food invented by the Japanese in America”. As

it turns out though, fortune cookies were actually invented in Japan, which is probably

why there are so many credible stories of Japanese immigrants in the early 20th century

supposedly “inventing” fortune cookies. In fact, they simply brought them over from

Japan. This fact was only proven a couple decades

ago in a discovery by researcher, Yasuko Nakamachi, who encountered a fortune cookie-shaped cracker,

called a Tsujiura Senbei, made by hand in a family bakery (Sohonke Hogyokudo), near

a Shinto shrine outside of Kyoto, Japan. This “cracker”, not only looked like a fortune

cookie, it also contained a fortune, called an “omikuji” (fortune slip), and was traditionally

sold in shrines and temples. These crackers are cooked by pouring batter

into waffle-iron-like molds and then holding the irons over coals. While the cracker is

still warm, little pieces of paper containing a message are folded within.

This all lead to research on exactly when these crackers first started being made, to

see if they predated when the fortune cookies first started showing up in America. One of

the earliest documented definitive references can be found in an 1878 image of an apprentice

baker making these fortune cookies in a bakery. Not only was the apprentice baker depicted

making these cookies, but he was making them exactly as they were being made by the bakery

Nakamachi observed them being baked at outside of Kyoto. This image was found in the 19th

century book of stories, “Moshiogusa Kinsei Kidan”, and pre-dates fortune cookies popping

up in America by about two to three decades. Going back even further than that, there is

a reference in a book, from the early 19th century, where a woman tries to placate two

other women with a cracker that contains a fortune inside.

Interestingly, descendants of two of the first bakeries to make fortune cookies, including

one that has been in operation for about a century in America, still possess the original

black iron “kata” grills their ancestors used. These grills are nearly identical to

the ones being used by the bakeries outside of Kyoto and which also mirror the one depicted

in the 1878 image of the apprentice baker. So fortune cookies were brought to America

from Japan by Japanese immigrants. How then did they end up in Americanized Chinese food

restaurants? There are a few plausible theories out there, but nobody knows for sure.

After World War II, it is well documented that fortune cookies were almost exclusively

being served in Chinese restaurants in California. From there, they spread to nearly all Chinese

restaurants in America and a few others in Europe and South America. According to fortune

cookie makers from that era, the spread from California to the rest of America was instigated

largely by soldiers returning home from Pacific Theater of Operations (PTO). When soldiers

went home, they requested fortune cookies from their local Chinese restaurants, like

they had found in California, and thus the spread.

Further, during WWII, over 100,000 people who were of Japanese decent were locked up

in internment camps; among them were many of the Japanese bakers who made fortune cookies.

Also, things associated with Japan, such as Japanese restaurants, weren't too favorably

thought of at the time. So a combination of many of the Japanese restaurant and bakery

owners and workers being locked up and the unpopularity of things associated with Japan

left fortune cookies to be primarily found in Chinese restaurants by the soldiers. This

also created a vacuum in the manufacturing of fortune cookies, as many of the Japanese

manufacturers of fortune cookies were in internment camps. Thus, many Chinese bakeries took over

in the production of fortune cookies. Another theory is simply that the Japanese

bakers themselves were perfectly willing to sell to any restaurant that wanted to buy.

Chinese cuisine typically doesn't have any dessert items, thus it is plausible that the

fortune cookie caught on more with Chinese restaurants because it made for a nice cheap

dessert to add to the menu. Also, in the early 19th century, many Japanese immigrants opened

Americanized-Chinese restaurants as Americanized-Chinese cuisine tended to be more popular than traditional

and even Americanized-Japanese cuisine to Americans.

Bonus Facts: • Fortune cookies are typically made primarily

from flour, sugar, vanilla, butter, and oil. The original Japanese version was made from

the same basic ingredients except they substituted sesame for vanilla and miso for butter. They

were also traditionally much larger than we see them today, even among the early versions

presented in America. • The popular claimants to have been the

supposed “inventors” of the fortune cookie include: Makoto Hagiwara, who was a Japanese

immigrant who oversaw the construction of the Japanese Tea Garden in San Francisco.

Visitors to this garden were served fortune cookies made by Benkyodo, a Japanese bakery,

as early as 1907. Despite the fact that he purchased them from the Benkyodo bakery, Makoto

Hagiwara is often given credit for inventing them.

Another claimant is Chinese immigrant David Jung, founder of the Hong Kong Noodle Company

in Los Angeles. He said he created them in 1918. Unfortunately for him, there are documented

cases, such as Makoto Hagiwara, serving them before that date, even besides the documented

instances in Japan before this. In his story, he said he was concerned about the plight

of the poor he saw wondering near his shop, so created the cookie with inspirational messages,

such as scripture, embedded inside and gave them away to these poor for free, to both

feed them and help lift their spirits. Probably the most credible claimant to be

the first to introduce fortune cookies to America was Seiichi Kito, the founder of the

Fugetsu-do bakery, which is still in operation today. Kito said that he got the idea from

the cookies sold in Japanese temples which contained fortunes and that he very slightly

modified the Japanese recipe to fit American tastes better. He then proceeded to sell them

to restaurants and they caught on best among Chinese restaurants in LA and San Francisco.

His story closely matches the results of the recent research done by Nakamachi, which was

done after Kito's death. • The practice of putting paper with messages

on it inside food was actually fairly common in certain regions in Japan at one time, particularly

in candies. This practice was later abandoned as many people would eat the candy or baked

product without knowing there was a piece of paper with a message inside the food item.

• Until the 1940s, fortune cookies were known as “fortune tea cakes”.

• Edward Louie invented the world's first fortune cookie folding machine, which allowed

fortune cookies to be massed produced for the first time. Before his invention, fortune

cookies were all folded by hand. In the 1980s, Dr. Yongsik Lee invented the world's first

fully automated fortune cookie machine. This machine works by pumping the batter into small

heated grills. After a few minutes of baking the batter, a fortune message is laid on top

of the baked batter. Clamps then close the cookies and form the shape of the fortune

cookie. After this, the cookies are cooled and then packaged.

• Chop suey, which translates to “break into many pieces”, is commonly held to be

a “Chinese” food invented in America. However, this is incorrect. It was invented

in Taishan, which is a district of Guangdong Province, China. So it is a Chinese food invented

in China… oddly enough.