The History of the Fortune Cookie

December 13, 2009 at 5:29 am · Filed under Uncategorized and tagged: chef, cheffing, chinese history, cooking, food, fortune cookie history, fortune cookie recipe, history of fortune cookies, recipe, recipes

As I was flipping through the channels last night, I ended up finding an old episode of ‘Family Feud’ on the GSN. Being that it was close to 1:00 a.m. and the only other interesting show to watch was ‘Golden Girls’, I decided to settle in to the comedy-stylings of Louie Anderson. When I watch ‘Family Feud’, I can’t just sit nicely and take it all in – I’ve gotta play along!

The topic was “name things that you get at a Chinese food restaurant” and there were only two boxes left. I thought to myself, “Chopsticks… already taken, huh? Soy sauce packets! Nope that’s taken too… OH! OH! FORTUNE COOKIES!” It wasn’t up there yet and I just new it had to be! Louie, the perpetual host, asked the next person to “Name something you’d find in a Chinese food restaurant” and the person had to think reeeeally hard before saying “PIANO!”

Piano?! Where do they find these people?

“FOOOORTUNE COOOOKIE!” I screamed in my mind. Well, sure enough they got three strikes before finding out that the remaining two answers did in fact, include ‘fortune cookie.’

Piano?… Jeeze…

That little mental vignette got the troll-dolls in my head banging rocks together and I put together my next blog entry which you are currently reading. Everyone knows what a fortune cookie is but hardly anyone knows the history behind this stale little sugary soothsayer.

The fortune cookie dates back to the fourteenth century right before the Chang Dynasty and actually wasn’t a cookie at all but rather a type of steamed dumpling. You see, at that time the Chinese were under the control of the Mongols and were oppressed as a people. The Mongols were not known for being kind to the Chinese and certain groups of Chinese people started to convene in secret to stage a revolt. Obviously if they were discovered by the occupying Mongols, they would be quartered or set on fire so secrecy was mandatory. The big struggle these Chinese revolutionists had to overcome was how to let the Chinese people know about the revolt without alerting the Mongols. Fortunately, there was among the group a very observant person who noticed that while the Chinese people enjoyed eating a form of dumplings that had raw egg-yolk in it, the Mongols wouldn’t go near them and considered them dirty peasant food.

Chu Yuan Chang proposed using these dumpling (called mooncakes) to secretly deliver messages on stamped copper to his countrymen alerting them to the upcoming revolt. The plan worked beautifully and the Mongols were overthrown and run out of China in 1386. Chu Yuan Chang would go on to become the first Emporer of China and one of the first things he would do was to oversee the construction of the Great Wall of China.

After the Chinese acquired control of their country, there really wasn’t any point in putting metal into food anymore so the secret message inside the food went away… for awhile.

Jump ahead a few centuries and the fortune re-emerges in (drum-roll please…) San Francisco! Common speculation is that the Chinese immigrants brought to the west coast to build the railroads brought with them their history, among that being the story of the mooncakes. In 1890, Chef Makoto Hagiwara of the Golden Gate’s Japanes Tea Garden started making a hardened molasses cookie that was shaped around a “blessing of good fortune” written on common paper. Editor’s note: Even though Chef Hagiwara was of Japanese decent, he most likely would have been lumped into the same community as the Chinese when fresh off the boat. Furthermore, the Japanese would probably know the history of the mooncakes due to their close proximity to China.
Even though Chef Hagiwara was known for introducing the western United States to the fortune cookie, it was in 1918 that not one, but two official claims were made as to the invention of the fortune cookie. In San Francisco, David Jung of the Hong Kong Noodle Company started to mass produce the cookie while farther south in Los Angeles, Seiichi Kito started to make the same exact cookie at his restaurant, Fugetsu-Do. To this day, nobody’s exactly sure who gets the credit for inventing the modern day fortune cookie but two things are for sure – they are a fun way to end a Chinese meal and nobody actually plays those lucky lottery numbers…

Here’s a fortune cookie recipe I used at a martini lounge and grill I worked at a few years back. We used to print drink coupons to put into the cookies and would give them out to our diners and VIP’s. It was a great promotion and people really enjoyed them!

Fortune Cookies

• 2 large egg whites
• 1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 1/2 teaspoon pure almond extract
• 3 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 8 tablespoons all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoons cornstarch
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 8 tablespoons granulated sugar
• 3 teaspoons water

Preparation:

2. In a medium bowl, lightly beat the egg white, vanilla extract, almond extract and vegetable oil until frothy, but not stiff.

3. Sift the flour, cornstarch, salt and sugar into a separate bowl. Stir the water into the flour mixture.

4. Add the flour into the egg white mixture and stir until you have a smooth batter. The batter should not be runny, but should drop easily off a wooden spoon.

5. Place level tablespoons of batter onto the cookie sheet, spacing them at least 3 inches apart. Gently tilt the baking sheet back and forth and from side to side so that each tablespoon of batter forms into a circle 4 inches in diameter.

6. Bake until the outer 1/2-inch of each cookie turns golden brown and they are easy to remove from the baking sheet with a spatula (14 – 15 minutes).

7. Working quickly, remove the cookie with a spatula and flip it over in your hand. Place a fortune in the middle of a cookie. To form the fortune cookie shape, fold the cookie in half, then gently pull the edges downward over the rim of a glass, wooden spoon or the edge of a muffin tin. Place the finished cookie in the cup of the muffin tin so that it keeps its shape. Continue with the rest of the cookies.

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