The Fortune Cookie: A Tradition From the Wrong Country
Fortune cookies are served at the end of a Chinese meal in America, Britain and much of the West, and they are not Chinese. The Fortune Cookie Generator hands out a virtual one, and the history behind it is better than the fortunes.
Where they actually came from
The trail leads to Japan, where a larger, darker cracker called tsujiura senbei - made with sesame and miso rather than vanilla and butter - has been sold near temples since at least the 1800s, with a paper fortune tucked into the fold.
They reached the United States with Japanese immigrants in California around the turn of the twentieth century. Two competing claims exist for who first served them: Makoto Hagiwara at the Japanese Tea Garden in San Francisco, and David Jung's Hong Kong Noodle Company in Los Angeles. A mock trial in San Francisco in 1983 found for the city's own claim, which settles nothing.
The shift to Chinese restaurants came during the Second World War, when Japanese-American businesses were closed by internment and Chinese-American restaurants took up the product. The cookie became Chinese by association, and stayed that way.
The giveaway: fortune cookies are almost unknown in China. An attempt to introduce them there in the 1990s was reportedly marketed as "genuine American fortune cookies", which is the correct description.
Why the fortunes read the way they do
Read a few and the pattern is clear: vague, positive, and about the future. "A pleasant surprise is waiting for you." "Your hard work will pay off."
That is deliberate, and it is the same mechanism horoscopes use - a statement broad enough to fit anyone feels personal to the reader. Psychologists call it the Barnum effect, and it is why a fortune never says anything specific enough to be wrong.
Modern cookies often add lucky numbers on the back, and people really do play them. In 2005, 110 people shared a Powerball second prize because they had all played the same set of numbers from the same fortune cookie - which is a fine demonstration of how unrandom a shared "random" source is, and why the Random Number Generator is the better bet if you want numbers nobody else has.
The small pleasure of the thing
A fortune cookie is a prompt, not a prediction, and that is enough. It gives a table something to read aloud at the end of a meal, which is a genuinely nice piece of design.
It belongs with the Magic 8-Ball and the Love Calculator - tools whose output means nothing and whose point is the reaction.
Common questions
Are they Chinese?
No. Japanese in origin, American in practice, and essentially absent from China.
How are they folded?
While still hot and pliable, straight from the oven. They set hard within a minute, which is why the machines that make them run fast.
Who writes the fortunes?
Professional writers at the large manufacturers. It is a real job, and reportedly a difficult one to stay fresh at.
Is the lucky-numbers side worth playing?
Only for fun - and remember a great many people got the same slip.
Fancy a fortune?