Like the white takeout box, chopsticks, and soy packets, the fortune cookie is a fundamental element of a Chinese dinner in the United States. Its very nature appeals to an age-old idea of a mystical China and a faraway East, neatly encapsulated in a crumbly shell wrapped around a slip of paper holding ancient wisdom and lottery numbers. As popular as the fortune cookie is in the United States, it may surprise a lot of people to know that the fortune cookie is not an authentic part of traditional Chinese cuisine.
An American creation, fortune cookies are made at a rate of three billion each year, and the majority of them are consumed in the United States. The cookies are first baked round and flat and then folded into the familiar fortune cookie shape while still soft. A fortune is inserted as the cookie cools and the confection hardens around the slip of paper, locking it inside until a hungry or curious diner breaks it open. The ingredients for the success of the fortune cookie are simple: a dash of mystery, a bit of fun, and a hint of the exotic, all combined with the allure of a different culture in a manageable and edible portion. While the idea might be simple and the popularity of the fortune cookie in America undeniable, the origins of the cookie are a great deal more complicated.
The origin of the fortune cookie is a matter of some dispute, as both Japanese and Chinese communities in the United States have declared the fortune cookie as their own creation. It is more than simple historical curiosity that drives the question of who created the cookie as civic pride is at stake. In 1983, representatives from San Francisco and Los Angeles took part in a mock trial to establish where the fortune cookie was created, with San Francisco representing the Japanese and Los Angeles representing the Chinese. The trial included theatrics, such as San Francisco delivering to the judge fortune cookies containing fortunes supporting their side. While the trial was settled in favor of San Francisco, both sides presented plausible cases for the origin of the fortune cookie. David Jung, a Chinese noodle shop owner, was said to have originated the fortune cookie in Los Angeles during the Great Depression. Inspired by a Chinese legend, Jung packed the cookies with encouraging phrases for unemployed laborers. The San Francisco contingent claimed that Japanese immigrant Makoto Hagiwara created the fortune cookie. A Japanese researcher later uncovered a link to a miso and sesame cracker shaped just like a larger version of a fortune cookie called a tsujiura senbei made in Kyoto. This cookie also held fortunes, but the fortune was pinched between the two folds of dough rather than placed inside the cookie. These combined scraps of evidence point to a Japanese origin for this popular American version of a Chinese dessert.
Fortune cookies are regularly included with Chinese restaurant meals in North America. Each crisp, golden-brown confection contains a slip of paper imprinted with a vaguely worded prediction or bit of seemingly proverbial wisdom. Although assumed by most Americans to be a traditional Chinese treat, fortune cookies are in fact native to the United States, where both Chinese American and Japanese American groups claim to have invented them. (Scott Karcich/Dreamstime.com)
The path of the fortune cookie to American dinner plates becomes clearer during the 1940s. With the outbreak of World War II, the fortune cookie increased in popularity and exposure as American servicemen bound for the Pacific theater ate at Chinese restaurants in San Francisco. Many Japanese Americans owned Chinese restaurants, and wartime paranoia resulted in the imprisonment of tens of thousands of people with Japanese ancestry, who then had to close their shops and restaurants. Chinese restauranteurs stepped in to fill the rapidly increasing demand for Chinese food and for the fortune cookie. Americanized Chinese food was already a fixture of dining out for Americans, and soldiers and sailors consumed what had by the 1940s become familiar foods such as chop suey. They even topped their meals off with the fortune cookie. By the end of the war, millions of American servicemen had returned to their homes believing fortune cookies were a part of genuine Chinese cuisine and requesting the treat from their local Chinese places. Chinese restaurant owners were puzzled by the demand for a dessert they had never heard of but were more than willing to accommodate their customers. The fortune cookie spread across the country and became a lasting part of Chinese American food as well as popular culture. The fortune cookie is used as part of wedding proposals, presidential elections, and even as the key element of a popular word game played by attaching an extra phrase to a fortune to make a usually innocent statement obscene. In the early 1990s an attempt was made to market the fortune cookie in China under the name “Genuine American Fortune Cookies.” The venture was unsuccessful, perhaps due in part to the fact that the fortune cookie is a uniquely American blend of culture, consumerism, and cuisine.
Daniel Fandino
See also Bok Kai Temple, Folktale, and Parade; Fa Mu Lan, or Mulan; Good Luck Charms; Guandi; Monkey King, or Sun Wukong; Superstitions; Zodiac, The
Further Reading
Brown, Linda Keller, and Kay Mussell. 1984. Ethnic Regional Foodways United States: Performance of Group Identity. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press.
Coe, Andrew. 2009. Chop Suey: A Cultural History of Chinese Food in the United States. New York: Oxford University Press.
Lee, Jennifer 8. 2008. The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food. New York: Twelve.