Fortune cookies are Japanese, by way of California
You won’t find fortune cookies in China. They descend from a Kyoto cracker, reached America through Japanese immigrants, and were taken over by Chinese restaurants during World War II.
Order dessert in a restaurant in Beijing and you won’t be offered a fortune cookie. The cookie is American, and its ancestor is Japanese.
The Kyoto cracker
In the 19th century, bakeries near Kyoto made tsujiura senbei: folded crackers with a fortune slip. In the Japanese version the slip was tucked into the outside bend, not baked inside, and the cracker was flavoured with sesame and miso rather than vanilla.
California claims
Several people claimed to have introduced the modern cookie to America:
- Makoto Hagiwara of the Japanese Tea Garden in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park is reported to have served them in the early 1900s.
- David Jung, founder of a Los Angeles noodle company, claimed he invented it in 1918.
- Seiichi Kito of the Fugetsu-do bakery in Los Angeles also claimed credit.
In 1983, San Francisco’s semi-serious Court of Historical Review held a mock trial and ruled for Hagiwara. A fortune cookie entered as evidence read: “S.F. Judge who rules for L.A. Not Very Smart Cookie.”
How it became “Chinese”
During World War II, Japanese-Americans, including many bakers, were forced into internment camps. Chinese-American manufacturers took over production, and the cookie became a fixture of Chinese restaurants across the US. The writer Jennifer 8. Lee, working with the Japanese researcher Yasuko Nakamachi, traced this history in The Fortune Cookie Chronicles.
Bring it up
“Fortune cookies are actually Japanese. A San Francisco court even ruled on who invented them, in a mock trial in 1983.”
Follow the thread
- Same patternCaesar salad was invented in Mexico A dish whose national label doesn’t match where it came from.
- In contrastJapan learned curry from the British Navy Japanese curry is a foreign dish that became Japanese; the fortune cookie is a Japanese one that became “Chinese”.
- Same patternGeneral Tso’s chicken is unknown in General Tso’s home province Two staples of American Chinese food whose roots are not on the Chinese mainland.
