Hey you, and welcome to the Short Stuff. I'm Josh and there's Chuck. And this is short stuff about fortune cookies, which is jam packed the stuff you didn't know about fortune cookies. You mean the little cookies. It tastes terrible that come from China. Uh part of that's right? Yeah, which part the taste terrible part? Yeah? I love a fortune cookie. I've never loved eating them, but I've always liked getting that fortune. I've had one or two fortune cookies where I was like, that was all right. I don't know what the deal was. They were freak fortune cookies, I guess because there is definitely a rarity, for sure, but yeah, it's fun. They should sandwich a fortune in the middle of an oreo. Yeah, why not? Then that'd be down so um. One of the things that I never realized that I never realized. I didn't realize until I started researching this, Chuck, is that the fortune is not actually baked into the fortune cookie. Did you know that? Well, sure it would catch fire. I didn't never think about that. I never did. And also it would be like gross from the you know, the batter. A fortune cookie is a little thin wafer cookie and when you start to cook it. Initially it's batter still, so that would make the fortune paper pretty mushy. So all right, smart guy, how do they put the fortunes in the fortune cookie? Then? What do you mean by you never really thought about it? Was you literally never thought about it for one second? That's absolutely true. Uh. They bake it for a little while first, and then they stick it in there, right, yeah, bake it and stick it bacon stick, and then fold it bake stick. And well you gotta fold first, right, you fold afterwards. That's the key. So you bake it as a flat wafer cookie, and then when you pull it out of the oven, it's still pliable, really quick folded into the into that thing with the with the fortune inside. All right, Well, we joked earlier. I joked about it coming from China, And you might think that they do because you find them traditionally in Chinese restaurants at the end of the meal. But that is probably not so. But we do have a couple of reasons why people might think this, and one of them is the fact that this story about moon cakes from China, This this food that's kind of associated with the mid Autumn festival when they're celebrating uh fall harvest. It's a little pastry. It's got a little sweeter, savory filling. They're usually round because of shape like the moon, but they can be square, and they're baked to a golden brown as far as the Cantonese style go. And they stamp a little uh name when they're cooking this thing after they mold it, so it's got a little stamp on their right, which tells you what's inside. For a lot of times, there's stuff like lotus paste, which is sweet sweet sweet bean paste, which is good red date paste, which is originally where the word jujub comes from. And then no matter whether it's salty or savory. From what I understand, the surprise in the middle is one or more salted cured chicken egg yolks. Duck egg yolks. I'm sorry, which are Have you ever had one of this? I don't think so. I think i'd probably know if I did. It does not get saltier than that. Part of your face will just fall right off after a couple of bites. It's crazy, just rise up and falls. You will well, then you will like duck eggs. You can get them at um, h Mart. They'll have them in like the dairy section. What'sh mar. Oh, it's like the big Asian grocery store. Korean grocery store. M I don't know about that. We have there are local Japanese storey. No, this is like a supermarket. Okay, it's over on two eight five and Peachtree Industrial, of course it is. Yeah, go check it out. Actually it's really good because not only do they have everything that's Asian and like a supermarket format chuck, so like all sorts of stuff you've never heard of to try, they also have the most outstanding food court you will ever encounter in your life. Oh you know what. I may have been there, then it's really good. Are there like eight eight restaurants? Yeah? Yeah, I've been there because I'm constantly seeking the best egg roll in Atlanta because Atlanta doesn't do egg rolls right. Oh yeah, I never really tried them. Yeah, they're the worst. I finally found a place though. Okay. Anyway, So, as the story goes back in the thirteenth and fourteen centuries, when China was being occupied by Genghis Khan and the Mongols, legend has it that they didn't like this lotus nut paste, and so when they were warring, the Chinese hidden messages about like what they were doing, the date of an uprising, maybe instructions or you know, how to coordinate the battle, and they would stick them in these moon cakes, knowing that their message would get through to the Chinese. But because the Mongols didn't like the lotus nut basted, they would just go ah and they'd throw it away. Yeah. Can't you see like some Mongol horde being like, what is that a mooncake? What's in there? They're like cured salted duck, egg yolk. Yeah, what else? Lotus nut paste? Oh God, get it away from me? Yeah, what else? Oh? Just instructions about the invasion, right exactly. So so that legend apparently is pretty widespread, and some people say that's probably where fortune cookies came from, right yeah, And I think, uh. The other thing too is that when children are born in China that families send out little cake rolls with messages inside announcing the birth of the child. So there's these couple of things, and the fact that, of course that you could have been Chinese restaurants, most people would just assume that they're from China. Yes, but then most people would be wrong because there's basically no one who's looked into this story um or the origin of fortune cookies that is like, yeah, they're from China, that's just wrong. And we'll tell you where they are actually probably from right after this, right, where are they from? Japan and America? That's right? Uh? Dating back to the eighteen seventies in Kyoto, Japan, they had what we're called fortune crackers. Do you want to rattle off that Japanese name? Uh? Suki uda semba man, You've really nailed it, Thank you. Can you actually speak Japanese? Though? No, I just know how to pronounce Japanese words when I see you. I didn't know if you were learning a little bit or not. No, it's just it won't stick. And I've never like sat down and actually really try. Well that's not true. I have tried a couple of times, but I've never like gone to class or anything. But for the stuff I have tried to pick up, it's just not stuck so far. How good is Yummy's Japanese? Oh, it's like pretty much flawless. Well, that's why you don't learn it, because when you go to Japan you're just like, I'm translator built in. I'm very lucky too, because it's like a second nature impulse for her to just tell me what's going on than just continue on in this conversation. It's really it's really helpful. But yeah, it's it's tough not to become dependent on that. She's like, I hate that big dope. I don't know what's going on fac here. So yeah, what's that? What's that guy doing? Good stuff? I wish Emily spoke something good? What does she speak? So she doing with her life? She studied French, but like like every other kid study a little bit of French, she doesn't really know any It's like me and my German were useless. I'm with you, like me in French too. But those fortune crackers in Japan from the eighteen seventies or flavored generally with like mis or sesame or something like that, not to the fortune cookie that we know. The other differentiator is that the fortunes were tucked into the bend of the fortune cookie. Pretty lazy people in Kyoto as opposed to wear inside the actual four yes yes, which you don't. I mean, that's not good. They didn't. They never learned the bacon stick. No, I guess not. But they did seem to originate something like fortune cookies. The question is how did that get to America. That's still unclear. So instead we say, okay, how where did the actual fortune cookie as we know it came from? And that's actually disputed. But the first, the earliest um story is in nineteen o seven and there's a guy named MacOda Makotagara and he was the caretaker of the Japanese tea gardens in San Francisco. And there's a story I've not been Actually it's a Golden Gate park, right, I've got to check it out. But um hog aora san. He apparently was fired for being Japanese by the mayor of San Francisco at the time, who said, there's a Japanese person taking care of the Japanese tea gardens. It's going park fire. That person not very San Francisco. No, And apparently Mr Hagiwara was very beloved and the public came to his aid and made sure that he got rehired. Right, And it's a thank you. He made legit fortune cookies like we know them, with little thank you notes inside and give gave them out to people who supported him. And like you said, this was nineteen o seven. So a lot of people say, well, there you go, bing bang boom. That's when it started in the US. Yeah. San Francisco is the home of the fortune cookie, and Los Angeles says not so fast, everybody. Of course, not only were we the ones who invented the fortune cookie, it was actually a Cantonese immigrant from China who invented the fortune cookie. No, not in nineteen o seven. I don't even believe your story, says l A. This happened in there was a guy named David Jung, founder of the Hong Kong Noodle Company, and he used to hand out little fortune cookies with little Bible scripture um printed on them as kind of a me up for people for who were unemployed wandering around Los Angeles that he did encounter. That's right. That's one version of the story. The other is that he created them as little appetizers. When people are waiting very Seinfeldian, waiting for their table at the Chinese restaurant, he would hand them out, uh, two people in line as a little appertif I guess to hold you over. So there's a mock court that was put together in three, the Court of Historical Reviews and Appeals. I believe they ruled on other stuff previously, but in three they took up the issue of them the Fortune Cookie, and being a San Francisco mock court, they ruled very clearly that San Francisco was the birthplace of the fortune Cookie. That's right, Ellie and San Francisco, they always have hated each other. They're always added over something, you know, And I think San Diego is like what about me? For San Diego, they're just down their surfing. Bro. Yeah. Remember we did that weird show there and that man was church or something. Yeah, And for a little while I was convinced that it was the church from um Prince of Darkness, the John Carpenter movie. But I went back and watched the movie and I was like, this is in it. But it had the same vibe. Yeah. I remember two things about that show. I remember it didn't really have a green room bathroom, so I was just in there peeing in the urnals next to everyone and they're like, oh, there's Chuck. It was like, yeah, that's me. And uh, I remember there was a guy on the front row fully filming the entire thing with a video camera, and he looked mad about it like he was he was like generating evidence or something. It was weird, so strange. Uh, maybe we'll come back one day, San Diego, if you'd get your act together. That's rights. Oh yeah. They were made for about forty years with chopsticks, which that takes a lot of skill to to fuld and make these things with chopsticks. I would think it's a very Japanese way to make fortune cookies, and it actually was the Japanese bakers in San Francisco who dominated the business from the early twentieth century up until World War Two, when they were forced out of the business because they were also forced out of their homes after Pearl harbor Um and the Japanese were uprooted and put into internment camps. And one of the outcomes of that was that they stopped making fortune cookies, and apparently this created a vacuum that the Chinese immigrants in the United States stepped in to fill. Very nice. Uh. Those first fortune cookies in the US did have little proverbs and sometimes scripture, but they started to get a little more English and Americanized by the nineteen thirties, and he started to get some of these, like you know, Confucius says this kind of things in there. Uh, and then you know, poor Richard's Almanac kind of stuff went in there, and then the lottery numbers started creeping in. Never been a big fan of that with a little emoji smiley faces and jokes and stuff like that. Not not a big fan of that stuff. No, especially miley faces. Unless there's some other message that makes a smiley face appropriate. I'm alright with that. Just give me a classic Fortune. So one of the great ironies of all this chuck is that in the mid nineties, the Wanton Food Company, the world's largest maker of Fortune cookies, looked around and said, what market have we not penetrated. Europe loves these things, America loves these things. What about China? China is gonna love these two And it took off like a rocket right now, It did not at all, And they basically said they're too American for us. And even though they make four million and these things every day, to the tune of about three billion cookies every year, they didn't take off there. They didn't like them, they didn't want them. Yeah, And I did that math, and apparently they have two factories, because you'd be making about eight million a data to come up with three billion. But who knows. I wouldn't be surprised if that's how much they were making. I mean, those things are flowing like water here in the States. Fuzzy math, Yes it is. Um. So I want to give a shout out to What's Cooking America l A, Times Today, History and um Jennifer eight Lee who popped up and I Think our Chinese Food on Christmas episode. She wrote The Fortune Cookie Chronicles adventures in the world of Chinese Food. She did a lot of scholarly research on fortune cookies recently, so hats off to her. Uh and hats off to you guys for listening to this episode of Short Stuff. Short Stuff is away now. Stuff You Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Hey you, and welcome to the Short Stuff. I'm Josh and there's Chuck. And this is short stuff about fortune cookies, which is jam packed the stuff you didn't know about fortune cookies. You mean the little cookies. It tastes terrible that come from China. Uh part of that's right? Yeah, which part the taste terrible part? Yeah? I love a fortune cookie. I've never loved eating them, but I've always liked getting that fortune. I've had one or two fortune cookies where I was like, that was all right. I don't know what the deal was. They were freak fortune cookies, I guess because there is definitely a rarity, for sure, but yeah, it's fun. They should sandwich a fortune in the middle of an oreo. Yeah, why not? Then that'd be down so um. One of the things that I never realized that I never realized. I didn't realize until I started researching this, Chuck, is that the fortune is not actually baked into the fortune cookie. Did you know that? Well, sure it would catch fire. I didn't never think about that. I never did. And also it would be like gross from the you know, the batter. A fortune cookie is a little thin wafer cookie and when you start to cook it. Initially it's batter still, so that would make the fortune paper pretty mushy. So all right, smart guy, how do they put the fortunes in the fortune cookie? Then? What do you mean by you never really thought about it? Was you literally never thought about it for one second? That's absolutely true. Uh. They bake it for a little while first, and then they stick it in there, right, yeah, bake it and stick it bacon stick, and then fold it bake stick. And well you gotta fold first, right, you fold afterwards. That's the key. So you bake it as a flat wafer cookie, and then when you pull it out of the oven, it's still pliable, really quick folded into the into that thing with the with the fortune inside. All right, Well, we joked earlier. I joked about it coming from China, And you might think that they do because you find them traditionally in Chinese restaurants at the end of the meal. But that is probably not so. But we do have a couple of reasons why people might think this, and one of them is the fact that this story about moon cakes from China, This this food that's kind of associated with the mid Autumn festival when they're celebrating uh fall harvest. It's a little pastry. It's got a little sweeter, savory filling. They're usually round because of shape like the moon, but they can be square, and they're baked to a golden brown as far as the Cantonese style go. And they stamp a little uh name when they're cooking this thing after they mold it, so it's got a little stamp on their right, which tells you what's inside. For a lot of times, there's stuff like lotus paste, which is sweet sweet sweet bean paste, which is good red date paste, which is originally where the word jujub comes from. And then no matter whether it's salty or savory. From what I understand, the surprise in the middle is one or more salted cured chicken egg yolks. Duck egg yolks. I'm sorry, which are Have you ever had one of this? I don't think so. I think i'd probably know if I did. It does not get saltier than that. Part of your face will just fall right off after a couple of bites. It's crazy, just rise up and falls. You will well, then you will like duck eggs. You can get them at um, h Mart. They'll have them in like the dairy section. What'sh mar. Oh, it's like the big Asian grocery store. Korean grocery store. M I don't know about that. We have there are local Japanese storey. No, this is like a supermarket. Okay, it's over on two eight five and Peachtree Industrial, of course it is. Yeah, go check it out. Actually it's really good because not only do they have everything that's Asian and like a supermarket format chuck, so like all sorts of stuff you've never heard of to try, they also have the most outstanding food court you will ever encounter in your life. Oh you know what. I may have been there, then it's really good. Are there like eight eight restaurants? Yeah? Yeah, I've been there because I'm constantly seeking the best egg roll in Atlanta because Atlanta doesn't do egg rolls right. Oh yeah, I never really tried them. Yeah, they're the worst. I finally found a place though. Okay. Anyway, So, as the story goes back in the thirteenth and fourteen centuries, when China was being occupied by Genghis Khan and the Mongols, legend has it that they didn't like this lotus nut paste, and so when they were warring, the Chinese hidden messages about like what they were doing, the date of an uprising, maybe instructions or you know, how to coordinate the battle, and they would stick them in these moon cakes, knowing that their message would get through to the Chinese. But because the Mongols didn't like the lotus nut basted, they would just go ah and they'd throw it away. Yeah. Can't you see like some Mongol horde being like, what is that a mooncake? What's in there? They're like cured salted duck, egg yolk. Yeah, what else? Lotus nut paste? Oh God, get it away from me? Yeah, what else? Oh? Just instructions about the invasion, right exactly. So so that legend apparently is pretty widespread, and some people say that's probably where fortune cookies came from, right yeah, And I think, uh. The other thing too is that when children are born in China that families send out little cake rolls with messages inside announcing the birth of the child. So there's these couple of things, and the fact that, of course that you could have been Chinese restaurants, most people would just assume that they're from China. Yes, but then most people would be wrong because there's basically no one who's looked into this story um or the origin of fortune cookies that is like, yeah, they're from China, that's just wrong. And we'll tell you where they are actually probably from right after this, right, where are they from? Japan and America? That's right? Uh? Dating back to the eighteen seventies in Kyoto, Japan, they had what we're called fortune crackers. Do you want to rattle off that Japanese name? Uh? Suki uda semba man, You've really nailed it, Thank you. Can you actually speak Japanese? Though? No, I just know how to pronounce Japanese words when I see you. I didn't know if you were learning a little bit or not. No, it's just it won't stick. And I've never like sat down and actually really try. Well that's not true. I have tried a couple of times, but I've never like gone to class or anything. But for the stuff I have tried to pick up, it's just not stuck so far. How good is Yummy's Japanese? Oh, it's like pretty much flawless. Well, that's why you don't learn it, because when you go to Japan you're just like, I'm translator built in. I'm very lucky too, because it's like a second nature impulse for her to just tell me what's going on than just continue on in this conversation. It's really it's really helpful. But yeah, it's it's tough not to become dependent on that. She's like, I hate that big dope. I don't know what's going on fac here. So yeah, what's that? What's that guy doing? Good stuff? I wish Emily spoke something good? What does she speak? So she doing with her life? She studied French, but like like every other kid study a little bit of French, she doesn't really know any It's like me and my German were useless. I'm with you, like me in French too. But those fortune crackers in Japan from the eighteen seventies or flavored generally with like mis or sesame or something like that, not to the fortune cookie that we know. The other differentiator is that the fortunes were tucked into the bend of the fortune cookie. Pretty lazy people in Kyoto as opposed to wear inside the actual four yes yes, which you don't. I mean, that's not good. They didn't. They never learned the bacon stick. No, I guess not. But they did seem to originate something like fortune cookies. The question is how did that get to America. That's still unclear. So instead we say, okay, how where did the actual fortune cookie as we know it came from? And that's actually disputed. But the first, the earliest um story is in nineteen o seven and there's a guy named MacOda Makotagara and he was the caretaker of the Japanese tea gardens in San Francisco. And there's a story I've not been Actually it's a Golden Gate park, right, I've got to check it out. But um hog aora san. He apparently was fired for being Japanese by the mayor of San Francisco at the time, who said, there's a Japanese person taking care of the Japanese tea gardens. It's going park fire. That person not very San Francisco. No, And apparently Mr Hagiwara was very beloved and the public came to his aid and made sure that he got rehired. Right, And it's a thank you. He made legit fortune cookies like we know them, with little thank you notes inside and give gave them out to people who supported him. And like you said, this was nineteen o seven. So a lot of people say, well, there you go, bing bang boom. That's when it started in the US. Yeah. San Francisco is the home of the fortune cookie, and Los Angeles says not so fast, everybody. Of course, not only were we the ones who invented the fortune cookie, it was actually a Cantonese immigrant from China who invented the fortune cookie. No, not in nineteen o seven. I don't even believe your story, says l A. This happened in there was a guy named David Jung, founder of the Hong Kong Noodle Company, and he used to hand out little fortune cookies with little Bible scripture um printed on them as kind of a me up for people for who were unemployed wandering around Los Angeles that he did encounter. That's right. That's one version of the story. The other is that he created them as little appetizers. When people are waiting very Seinfeldian, waiting for their table at the Chinese restaurant, he would hand them out, uh, two people in line as a little appertif I guess to hold you over. So there's a mock court that was put together in three, the Court of Historical Reviews and Appeals. I believe they ruled on other stuff previously, but in three they took up the issue of them the Fortune Cookie, and being a San Francisco mock court, they ruled very clearly that San Francisco was the birthplace of the fortune Cookie. That's right, Ellie and San Francisco, they always have hated each other. They're always added over something, you know, And I think San Diego is like what about me? For San Diego, they're just down their surfing. Bro. Yeah. Remember we did that weird show there and that man was church or something. Yeah, And for a little while I was convinced that it was the church from um Prince of Darkness, the John Carpenter movie. But I went back and watched the movie and I was like, this is in it. But it had the same vibe. Yeah. I remember two things about that show. I remember it didn't really have a green room bathroom, so I was just in there peeing in the urnals next to everyone and they're like, oh, there's Chuck. It was like, yeah, that's me. And uh, I remember there was a guy on the front row fully filming the entire thing with a video camera, and he looked mad about it like he was he was like generating evidence or something. It was weird, so strange. Uh, maybe we'll come back one day, San Diego, if you'd get your act together. That's rights. Oh yeah. They were made for about forty years with chopsticks, which that takes a lot of skill to to fuld and make these things with chopsticks. I would think it's a very Japanese way to make fortune cookies, and it actually was the Japanese bakers in San Francisco who dominated the business from the early twentieth century up until World War Two, when they were forced out of the business because they were also forced out of their homes after Pearl harbor Um and the Japanese were uprooted and put into internment camps. And one of the outcomes of that was that they stopped making fortune cookies, and apparently this created a vacuum that the Chinese immigrants in the United States stepped in to fill. Very nice. Uh. Those first fortune cookies in the US did have little proverbs and sometimes scripture, but they started to get a little more English and Americanized by the nineteen thirties, and he started to get some of these, like you know, Confucius says this kind of things in there. Uh, and then you know, poor Richard's Almanac kind of stuff went in there, and then the lottery numbers started creeping in. Never been a big fan of that with a little emoji smiley faces and jokes and stuff like that. Not not a big fan of that stuff. No, especially miley faces. Unless there's some other message that makes a smiley face appropriate. I'm alright with that. Just give me a classic Fortune. So one of the great ironies of all this chuck is that in the mid nineties, the Wanton Food Company, the world's largest maker of Fortune cookies, looked around and said, what market have we not penetrated. Europe loves these things, America loves these things. What about China? China is gonna love these two And it took off like a rocket right now, It did not at all, And they basically said they're too American for us. And even though they make four million and these things every day, to the tune of about three billion cookies every year, they didn't take off there. They didn't like them, they didn't want them. Yeah, And I did that math, and apparently they have two factories, because you'd be making about eight million a data to come up with three billion. But who knows. I wouldn't be surprised if that's how much they were making. I mean, those things are flowing like water here in the States. Fuzzy math, Yes it is. Um. So I want to give a shout out to What's Cooking America l A, Times Today, History and um Jennifer eight Lee who popped up and I Think our Chinese Food on Christmas episode. She wrote The Fortune Cookie Chronicles adventures in the world of Chinese Food. She did a lot of scholarly research on fortune cookies recently, so hats off to her. Uh and hats off to you guys for listening to this episode of Short Stuff. Short Stuff is away now. Stuff You Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.