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One hundred facts that are interesting but ultimately useless. |
Fortune Cookies - history - The most likely ancestor of the modern "fortune cookie" is the Japanese tradition of "o-mikuji". In Japanese temples, a visitor would leave a coin as an offering and choose a random -- and not necessarily positive -- fortune in the form of a small strip of paper ("o-mikuji", or "sacred lot"). These fortunes could also be inserted into folded rice-crackers called "tsujiura senbei". In the 1890s, Japanese immigrants introduced fortune cookies to California customers under the name of "fortune tea cakes". These became popular features of local Chinese restaurants, but were still mainly associated with Japanese culture until World War II. When many Japanese-Americans were relocated to internment camps, manufacture of fortune cookies was largely adopted by Chinese-Americans. Following the invention of a specialized automated machine in the 1970s, the fortune cookie became viable for mass production, leading to its international presence today. #028 |