The History of Cookies
The first cookies are said to have been made back in the 7th century A.D. in Persia, one of the first places to cultivate sugar cane, Persia is known for being the first to make many sweet cakes and other sugary sweets. Much later, in the late 1300's, one could buy cookies on the streets although they were not like the cookies we enjoy today. They were just little wafers.
This is the recipe for how to make cookies from a 1596 Elizabethan age cookbook called Goode Huswife's Jewel by Thomas Dawson.--
To make Fine Cakes.- Take fine flowre and good Damaske water you must have no other liqeur but that, then take sweet butter, two or three yolkes of eggs and a good quantity of Suger, and a few cloves, and mace, as your Cookes mouth shall serve him, and a lyttle saffron, and a little Gods good about a spoonful if you put in too much they shall arise, cutte them in squares lyke unto trenchers, and pricke them well, and let your oven be well swept and lay them uppon papers and so set them into the oven. Do not burne them if they be three or foure days olde they bee the better.
As you can see, the essential ingredients in coookies haven't changed from then till now. Even though as technology grew, so did our options of how to make cookies.
As sailors started sailing across the globe exploring, they brought with them biscuits called hard tack, they were just water and flour. They were eaten by explorers because they were an excellent food for long trips due to their very long shelf life.
Here are two more recipes from The English Hus-wife, by Gervase Markham written in 1615.
To make the best jumbles, take the whites of three eggs and beat them well, and take off the veil; then take a little milk and a pound of fine wheat flour and sugar together finely sifted, and a few aniseeds well rubbed and dried; and then work all together as stiff as you can work it, and so make them in what forms you please, and bake them in a soft oven upon white papers.
To make jumbles more fine and curious than the former, and near to the taste of the macaroon; take a pound of sugar, beat it fine; then take as much fine wheat flour and mix them together, then take two whites and one yolk of an egg, half a quarter of a pound of blanched almonds; then beat them very fine all together with half a dish of sweet butter, and a spoonful of rose-water, and so work it with a little cream till it come to a very stiff paste, then roll them forth as you please: and hereto you shall also, if you please, add a few dried aniseeds finely rubbed and strewed into the paste, and also coriander seed.
Here is one more recipe from The Closet of the Eminently Learned Sir Kenelme Digbie Kt Opened: Whereby is Discovered Several ways for making of Metheglin, Sider, Cherry-Wine, &c. together with Excellent Directions for Cookery: As also for Preserving, Conserving, Candying, &c., by Sir Kenelme Digbie written in 1671.
Excellent Small Cakes - Take three pound of very find flower well dryed by the fire, and put to it a pound and a half of loaf Sugar sifted in a very fine sieve and dryed; Three pounds of Currnats well washed and dryed in a cloth and set by the fire; When you flower is well mixed with the Sugar and Currants, you must put in it a pound and a half of unmelted butter, ten spoonfuls of Cream, with the yolks of three new-laid Eggs beat with it, one Nutmeg; and if you please, three spoonfuls of Sack. When you have wrought your paste well, you must put it in a cloth, and set it in a dish before the fire, til it be through warm. Then make then up in little cakes, and prick them full of holes; you muct bake them in a wuick oven unclosed. Afterwards Ice them over with Sugar. The Cakes should be about the bigness of a hand-breadth and thin: of the cise of the Sugar Cakes sold at Barnet.
The U.S.A was introduced to cookies when the English immigrants brought over their tea cakes and the scottish brought their shortbread. In early American cookbooks, cookies were not given much attention, they were just listed at the back of the cakes section with names like Jumbles, Plunkets, and Cry Babies. Even with its early history, cookies did not become popular until about a hundred years ago.
In the cookbook American Cookery: or, The Art of Dressing Viands, Fish, Poultry and Vegetables, and the Best Modes of Making Puff-pastes, Pies, Tarts, Puddings, Custards and Preserves, and all kinds of Cakes, from the Imperial Plumb to plain Cake by Amelia Simmons, is included two recipes for cookies. One is called "Cookies" and the other is "Chriftmas Cookey.' This was also the first cookbook written by an American and published in the United States.
Cookies - One pound sugar boiled slowly in half pint of water, scum well and cool, add 1 tea spoon perlash, dissolved in milk, then two and a half pounds of flour, rub in 4 ounces of butter, and two large spoons of finely powdered coriander seed, wet with above; make rolls half an inch thick and cut to the shape of please; bake fifteen or twenty minutes in a flack oven - good three weeks.
Chriftmas Cookery - To three pound of flour, sprinkle a tea cup of fine powdered coriander seed, rub in one pound of butter, and one and half pound sugar, dissolve one tea spoonful of perlash in a tea cup of milk, kneed all together well, roll three quarter of an inch thick, and cut or stamp into shape and size you please, bake slowly fifteen or twenty minutes; tho' hard and dry at first, if put in an earthern pot, and dry cellar, or damp room, they will be finer, softer and better when six months old.
With the growth and development of the United States. Hundreds of cookie recipes emerged with new ingredients and means of cooking. Today there are thousands of recipes from all over the world.
Chocolate Chip cookies
The classic Chocolate Chip cookie was invented by Ruth Wakefield who owned a tourist lodge called the Toll House Inn. One day she was trying to make a certain type of cookie that called for bakers chocolate. Finding that she did not have any, she substituted it with a semi-sweet chocolate bar cut into bits. It didn't work, the chocolate didn't completely melt but this new cookie soon became popular. The chocolate she had used came from the Nestle Chocolate Company. Soon, because of the cookies growing popularity, Nestle and Ruth made a deal that Nestle would print the Toll House recipe on it's packaging and in turn, Ruth would receive a lifetime supply of chocolate.
Peanut Butter Cookies - Hand rolled dough containing peanut butter. Dough is rolled into a ball and then flattened with the tins of a fork.
George Washington Carver wrote three recipes for peanut cookies calling for crushed/chopped peanuts as an ingredient in his 1916 Research Bulletin called How to Grow the Peanut and 105 Ways of Preparing it for Human Consumption.
Modern smooth peanut butter was first sold by Joseph L. Rosefield in 1922. His peanut butter would stay fresh for up to a year and was smoother than previous types. Rosefield created the Skippy label in 1932 and two years later created the first crunchy style peanut butter by adding chopped peanuts at the end.
Peanut butter was first listed as an ingredient in cookies in the early 1930's.
In the 1931 edition of Pillsbury's Balanced Recipes there is a recipe for Peanut Butter Balls with instructions to roll the dough into balls and press them down with the tines of a fork. This method is still common in America today.
Brownie, Brownies - A chocolate bar cookie. The name comes from the deep-brown color of the cookie.
No one knows for sure when chocolate brownies were first developed but some think that they were probably created by accident when someone forgot to add baking powder to a chocolate cake batter. In 1897, Sears, Roebuck catalog published the first known recipe for brownies and sold a brownie mix in the catalog. They soon became very popular.
Snickerdoodles - Traditional snickerdoodles are coated with cinnamon sugar before being baked.
As was mentioned before, cookies in America were originally brought to the United States by our English, Scottish, and Dutch immigrants. The name Snickerdoodles originated with the New England states and was one of the earlier names for cookies, as was Jumbles and Cry Babies.
Cookies were always given the back seat in early cookbooks. The odd names are probably just the result of New England cooks just wanting the fun of saying these whimsical names. Snickerdoodles comes from this tradition as do Graham Jakes, Jolly Boys, Branble, Tangle Breeches, and Kinkawoodles.
Fortune Cookies � A tasty Chinese-American wafer cookie with a piece of paper inside with a �fortune� written on it. Fortune means �a prediction of destiny or fate.� These cookies are usually used in Chinese-American restaurants after the meal is completed, and the cookie must be broken open to get the fortune. Fortune Cookies are not known in the Chinese food culture, and it was not until the 1990s that the fortune cookies actually arrived in China. They were advertised as �Genuine American Fortune Cookies.�
Some historians think that the inspiration for Fortune Cookies come from the 12th and 13th centuries when Chinese soldiers slipped rice paper messages into mooncakes to help coordinate their defense against Mongolian invaders. According to legend, the Mongolians had no taste for lotus nut paste. Because of this, the Chinese hid the message containing the date of the uprising and the instructions coordinating the uprising in the middle of their Moon Cakes (replacing the yolk with secret messages). Patriotic revolutionary, Chu Yuan Chang took on the disguise of a Taoist priest and entered occupied walled cities handing out Moon Cakes. These were the instructions to coordinate the uprising which successfully formed the basis of the Ming Dynasty. It is also a Chinese custom when children are born for the families to send out cake rolls with a message inside announcing the birth of the child. For almost 40 years, the fortune cookies were made using chopsticks.
The messages in the first fortune cookies were simple proverbs or bits of Scripture. By the 1930s, English variations on Confucian logic crept in. Some fortune writers took an American slant, lifting bits from Poor Richard's Almanac. Today, the fortune these cookies carry can contain messages from Biblical verses, romantic messages, corporate messages, and many more.
I got this info from "The History of Cookies" by Linda Stradley, http://www.whatscookingamerica.net.