|
Fortune cookies probably didn't arrive on Asian shores until 1993 -- and they weren't much of a hit. However, the cookies and their Confucius-inspired sayings have been a mainstay of Chinese-American dinners since World War II. While the cookie's origins aren't an ancient secret, some mystery surrounds exactly who invented the oracular dessert. One theory asserts that a Japanese immigrant named Makoto Hagiwara created the cookies around 1915. Hagiwara was the landscaper and caretaker of the Japanese
Tea Garden in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, where he served the cookies with tea. At some point, nearby Chinese restaurants discovered the fortune cookies and added them as dessert. Another cookie creation story also takes place in California. A Chinese immigrant named David Jung of Los Angeles claimed he invented the fortune cookie in 1918. Jung gave the cookies, which carried Bible verses inside, to the unemployed as inspiration. He later started the Hong Kong Noodle Company and sold fortune cookies. Today, most fortune cookies are made by a factory in Queens, New York, a fact that makes this classic fortune
a little less likely.
|
