Fortune Cookies and Eliza Leslie's 'Secrets' with hidden messages

Kata irons made a 19th century Japanese cookie, a precursor to the Fortune Cookie.  More information - including a nice slide show -  available at the links below.  Thin wafers rolled into cylinders or cones.

And the Secrets?  Wrap nuts or sweets with a verse on a paper in colorful glazed paper.

SECRETS. --Take glazed paper of different colours, and cut it into squares of equal size, fringing two sides of each. Have ready, burnt almonds, chocolate nuts, and bonbons or sugar-plums of various sorts; and put one in each paper with a folded slip containing two lines of verse; or what will be much more amusing, a conundrum with the answer. Twist the coloured paper so as entirely to conceal their contents, leaving the fringe at each end. This is the most easy, but there are various ways of cutting and ornamenting these envelopes.

Leslie, Eliza.  Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches.  Phila: 1840 (1837)

Chinese Fortune Cookies from Japan 

"Japanese American Fortune Cookie: A Taste of Fame or Fortune - Part 1", online 2007 by Gary T. Ono   HERE         slide show HERE

The Fortune Cookie Chronicles, Adventures in the World of Chinese Food. Jennifer 8 Lee, 2008.   blog post "Fortune cookies really made in Japan"   HERE

More in the post on wafers, gaufres, cornets and cones HERE

©2018 Patricia Bixler Reber
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