Everyone loves fortune cookies at the end of their meal ─ but you won’t get them in China. New York Times blogger Jennifer 8. Lee, author of "The Fortune Cookie Chronicles," reveals the origins of some popular menu items.
Fortune cookies
Fortune cookies are from Japan. Fortune cookies are essentially unknown in China. In fact, a Brooklyn-based company tried to introduce them to China in the 1990s, but gave up, saying the cookies were “too American.” So where do fortune cookies originally come from? Japan. The precursor to the fortune cookie is still made in a handful of small family-owned bakeries in the Kyoto area, near the Fushimi Inari shrine. The cookies are larger, and flavored with miso and sesame, which gives them more of a nutty flavor and brown color.
The cookies were introduced in pre-World War I California by Japanese immigrants who called them fortune tea cakes at that point. A great shift in production happened around the time of World War II, when the Japanese were interned and the Japanese family-run bakeries were shut down. At the same time there was a spurt in Chinese fortune-cookie manufacturing, which transformed it into a Chinese restaurant standard. By the late 1950s, 250 million fortune cookies were being made each year. The cookies were used in the 1960 presidential campaign and in this year's Barack Obama campaign. The summary of the cookie could be put thusly: The Japanese introduced it. The Chinese popularized it. Americans consume it.
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