Around three billion fortune cookies are made in the U.S. each year and distributed in Chinese restaurants from North and South America to Europe and India–but not in China.
The popular snacks were almost certainly originally created in Japan, although the story of how they made their way into Chinese restaurants is quite convoluted.
References to the omikuji (fortune) cookies and an image of a baker making them in shops by the Fushimi Inari-taisha Shrine in south Kyoto, date back to 1878. Fushimi Inari, which dates back to 711, is famous for the 1,000 red-orange torii gates leading up to it.
One of the bakeries that still makes them has used the same 23 fortunes for decades. All the fortune crackers in Kyoto are made by hand and, naturally, are flavored with miso and sesame rather than vanilla and butter.
In the 1920s and 1930s, Japanese who immigrated to California, realized that Americans were not ready for traditional Japanese cuisine, but the Americanized Chinese food was popular. Many of them ran “chop suey” restaurants and, lacking a dessert, they served the omikuji cakes made by the Japanese Umeya Bakery in Southern California.
The jump to Chinese run restaurants is less certain, but stay with me. When World War II came along, Japanese in California were sent to internment camps. This gave Chinese manufacturers a chance to take over the production of the popular cookie and distribute them to their own restaurants.
Thus unfolded the fortune of the fortune cookie.
