How the cookie is baked
Every cookie on this page holds one of 60 fortunes written specially for it. They are original, warm and gently silly, and none of them came from the usual recycled stock, so you will not be told about long journeys, closing doors or opening windows. When you tap the cookie, your browser's cryptographic random number generator (crypto.getRandomValues, the same machinery used to create encryption keys) draws one fortune, the two halves crack apart and the paper slip unfurls between them. The draw happens before the animation starts, so the crack is pure theatre, and if your device is set to reduce motion the halves part without the flourish and the fortune appears straight away.
Everything happens on your device. No fortune is fetched from a server, nothing you do is stored or tracked, and refreshing the page simply bakes a fresh batch. Tap the open cookie, or press the new cookie button, and draw again as many times as you like.
The odds of a repeat
Sixty fortunes sounds like plenty, but repeats sneak up on you the same way shared birthdays do in a classroom. Each cookie is an independent draw, so the maths is simple to state and mildly surprising to see.
A short history of the fortune cookie
The fortune cookie is usually filed under Chinese food and almost certainly is not Chinese. The strongest trail leads to Japan, where 19th-century bakeries around Kyoto made tsujiura senbei, larger and darker crackers with a paper fortune tucked into the fold, and an 1878 illustration shows them being made. Japanese immigrants brought the idea to California in the early 1900s: the Japanese Tea Garden in San Francisco was serving them around 1910, while a Los Angeles baker made a rival claim, and in 1983 a tongue-in-cheek mock trial in San Francisco ruled in favour of, unsurprisingly, San Francisco.
During the Second World War, when Japanese Americans were interned, production largely passed to Chinese-American businesses, and the cookie spread nationwide through Chinese restaurants, which is how it acquired its modern identity. Today around three billion are baked each year, most of them by a single company in New York, and in China itself they are sold as an American curiosity. A dessert invented in Japan, popularised in America and filed under China: the cookie's own story is stranger than most of its fortunes.
Ways to use the fortunes
- End of a meal: pass the phone round the table and let everyone crack their own. Reading them aloud is compulsory, obviously.
- Place cards and party bags: keep drawing until you have one favourite per guest, then copy them onto slips of paper for the table or the going-home bags.
- A tiny morning ritual: one cookie with the first cup of tea. On a good day it is charming, and on a bad day it is at least short.
- Ice breakers: open a meeting or a lesson with one and let people argue about whether it applies to the project.
If you want an answer rather than an aphorism, ask the magic 8 ball instead, and if you want to reveal a prize rather than a proverb, the scratch card is the tool for the job.
Frequently asked questions
Where do the fortunes come from?
All 60 were written specially for this page. They are original, warm and family friendly, and you will not find the usual recycled lines about journeys of a thousand miles. No fortunes are fetched from anywhere: the whole list lives in the page and one is drawn at random each time.
Can I get the same fortune twice?
Yes. Each cookie is an independent draw from 60 fortunes, so a repeat straight away has a 1 in 60 chance. Repeats become likely faster than you might expect: across ten cookies there is roughly a 55% chance of seeing at least one fortune twice.
Are fortune cookies actually Chinese?
Not really. The best evidence points to Japan, where crackers with fortunes tucked into them were made in the 1800s. Japanese immigrants popularised them in California in the early 1900s, and they spread through Chinese-American restaurants. In China itself they are a curiosity, not a tradition.
Is anything uploaded when I crack a cookie?
No. The fortune is chosen by your browser's own cryptographic random number generator and everything happens on your device. Nothing you do here is sent, stored or tracked, and refreshing the page simply bakes you a fresh cookie.
Can I use these fortunes at my own event?
Yes, help yourself for personal use. They work nicely tucked into napkins or place cards at a dinner party, added to party bags, or read aloud at the end of a family meal. Keep cracking cookies until you have collected enough favourites.