Where do fortune cookies come from?
What most people think: Most people believe fortune cookies are a traditional Chinese dessert.
Guess before the Apple does
Just tell me the answer
They have Japanese roots and were popularised in California. A similar cracker was made in Kyoto in the 1800s, and the modern cookie was served in San Francisco in the early 1900s, not in China.
You finish your sweet and sour pork, crack open a little folded biscuit and read your future. It feels like an ancient Chinese ritual. In reality, most people in China have probably never been handed one.
The short answer
Fortune cookies are an American invention with Japanese roots. A similar cracker called tsujiura senbei was being made in Kyoto in the 1800s, and Japanese immigrants in California developed the version we know today in the early 1900s. They only became associated with Chinese restaurants later.
The real story
In Japan, tsujiura senbei are still made by some bakeries, including near Kyoto’s Fushimi Inari shrine. They are bigger and browner than the American version, flavoured with sesame and miso, and the paper fortune is tucked into the outside of the fold rather than hidden inside. Japanese researcher Yasuko Nakamachi found an 1878 woodblock illustration showing the crackers being grilled.
The best-known American origin story centres on Makoto Hagiwara, a Japanese landscape designer who looked after the Japanese Tea Garden in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. Hagiwara is reported to have been the first to serve the modern fortune cookie in the United States, offering them with green tea. As demand grew, a local confectioner, Benkyodo, founded in 1906, took over production. Several of the bakery’s original cookie moulds are now held by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History.
Other people claimed the invention too, including David Jung of Los Angeles, who said he created the cookie in 1918. In 1983, San Francisco’s tongue-in-cheek Court of Historical Review ruled in Hagiwara’s favour. Los Angeles was not amused.
So how did a Japanese treat end up in Chinese restaurants? In the 1910s and 1920s, Japanese bakeries made the cookies, then called fortune tea cakes, and many were served in Chinese restaurants. Then in 1942, after Executive Order 9066, people of Japanese descent were forced into internment camps, including the bakers. Chinese American manufacturers stepped in, and the cookie became theirs.
Today around 3 billion fortune cookies are made each year, mostly in the United States. One Brooklyn company, Wonton Food, makes over 4.5 million a day. When it tried selling them in China in 1992, it gave up because they were considered too American.
Why people get it wrong
Fortune cookies arrive with the bill at Chinese restaurants across the Western world, often with lucky numbers and proverb-style messages. The setting does all the work. We never see them anywhere else, so we assume they came from the same place as the food.
The real story involves wartime history most diners have never heard of, which is why the myth survives every single takeaway night.
“Japanese invention, Chinese takeaway, American dessert. That little cookie’s got more passport stamps than I have.”
Sources
Fact-checked 31 Oct 2026. Spotted a mistake? Tell us and we'll fix it in public.
