Fortune cookies: how an iconic sweet is created in New York

Almost all Chinese restaurants in America serve a fortune cookie after the main course. These sweets are over 100 years old. In 2017 Chief Prediction Writer at Wonton Food (America's largest fortune cookie company by definition) Donald Lau has retired. Seeing him off to rest the company told the story of this interesting product to the publication Time inviting journalists to a factory in Brooklyn that makes 4,5 million cookies a day.

Former banker Lau was a top prediction writer for 30 years. But if earlier he composed 100 forecasts a year, then in the last year of his work he created only a few dozen. “I'm in a creative crisis,” says Lau, who was chosen to write predictions for the Brooklyn factory not because of his writing talent, but because he knew English better than anyone at the company when it was founded.

After Lau left, his place was taken by James Wong, whom his predecessor had been preparing for six months. Wong is 43 and the nephew of the founder of Wonton Food.

History in brief

There are several versions of the origin of fortune cookies. Lau likes the one that starts with the Ming Dynasty the most. In those days, people gave each other moon cakes with secret messages. Some researchers believe that "happiness cookies" are native to Japan - similarly shaped treats were previously popular in the Kyoto area. This "Chinese dessert" arrived in the United States at the end of the XNUMXth century, during the California gold rush.

American missionaries in China talked a lot about what is happening across the Pacific. The most adventurous Chinese flooded to the United States in the hope of getting rich off gold. In 1870, Chinese made up nearly 10% of the California population and about 20% of the state's workforce. They first worked on farms and helped build railways. But in 1882, Congress banned Chinese manual labor and the granting of citizenship to working immigrants from China. Because of this, many Chinese people moved to work in the service industry: they opened laundries and restaurants.

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At the same time, the Japanese began to come to the United States. True, not so many, so the law of 1882 did not touch them. Many Californian Japanese also worked in the service industry. At the beginning of the twentieth century, they realized that their native cuisine was too exotic for Americans, so they began to open Chinese restaurants, which at that time were already popular in California. The Japanese brought some of the traditions of their people to these establishments. It is not known for certain who invented the fortune cookie, but we can say for sure that the American version of the product is the result of the fusion of Japanese and Chinese cultures in the United States.

That all changed after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. President Roosevelt ordered the establishment of camps for Japanese Americans. Many restaurants belonging to the Japanese owners have closed. It was during this period that fortune cookies mysteriously began to be considered not Japanese, but Chinese product.

During World War II, the demand for predicted cookies increased. Soldiers returning from California to other states brought it as a souvenir. So this delicacy spread throughout America and became a symbol of the Chinese community of the country. It remains to them today, when the Chinese are considered the fastest-growing ethnic group in the United States.

The taste and color

Fortune cookies are a purely American phenomenon. In the 1990s, Wonton Food tried to enter the Chinese market, but failed. The Chinese, for whom the product turned out to be unfamiliar, constantly ate pieces of paper with a forecast. Americans, however, according to research, often leave cookies uneaten after reading a prediction (about 25% of consumers).

Experts believe that China’s modern history is to blame. In 1950-1960, the communist government even regulated what the Chinese eat. As a result of the “reforms”, people often lacked ordinary rice, so when decades later a cookie with predictions came to China, many perceived it as an unnecessary and incomprehensible luxury item. Even today, when China’s economy is growing rapidly, prediction cookies have not become popular here.

Sweet impression

The Japanese believe that the “older” the prediction, the more valuable it is. However, American copywriters must always come up with new, unique messages. Lau says that when he became the chief writer of predictions in 1980, he got a stack of yellowed texts, most of which were like horoscopes (“You will meet a new friend tomorrow”). Today, there are almost no predictions in predictions - as a rule, there are sayings that lift people’s mood. Lau says that he tried to interweave political nuances in the texts (for example, during the presidential elections in the United States), but they either do not pass the approval of the Wonton Foods staff committee, or, as events unfold, quickly lose their relevance.

The company sometimes runs online prediction contests and monitors consumer reactions on a regular basis. Different stories happen with predictions hidden in cookies. For example, in 2005, Wonton Foods became the subject of a government investigation after several people won $ 19 million in the lottery by quoting numbers from the turnover of predictions. One abandoned wife complained that her husband had come across a cookie predicting an affair on a business trip. And one satisfied client shared a story about how he got a job after the forecast that new opportunities await him.

Wong, who is raising a 10-year-old daughter, often writes lyrics from personal experience.

“I think about what I want to tell her. I recently remembered an old Chinese saying: failure is the mother of success. I want my daughter to understand this: failures are normal if you learn from them. Then you can succeed. It is possible that what I want to say to my daughter is important for other people as well, ”he said.

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And Lau believes that good messages make people happier customers. Sounds quite practical from a business point of view.

“When customers crack open their fortune cookies and read the text, I want them to smile and leave the restaurant happy. To come back next week, ”he says.

Wonton Foods also cooks custom fortune cookiesthat can deliver the client home. The selection consists of over 10 flavors. It is also possible to order the production of kosher sweets. One cookie will cost 40 cents.