That's the Way the Cookie Crumbles!
What can we say about cookies … they are delicious! There are so many kinds … chocolate chip, vanilla wafers, macaroons, ginger snaps, even fortune cookies!
While eating a cookie, I wondered who made the first cookie. What is the history of the cookie? Do you know?
Wikipedia says:
Cookie-like hard wafers have existed for as long as baking is documented, in part because they deal with travel very well, but they were usually not sweet enough to be considered cookies by modern standards.
Cookies appear to have their origins in 7th century AD Persia, shortly after the use of sugar became relatively common in the region. They spread to Europe through the Muslim conquest of Spain. By the 14th century, they were common in all levels of society throughout Europe, from royal cuisine to street vendors.
With global travel becoming widespread at that time, cookies made a natural travel companion, a modernized equivalent of the travel cakes used throughout history. One of the most popular early cookies, which traveled especially well and became known on every continent by similar names, was the jumble, a relatively hard cookie made largely from nuts, sweetener, and water.
Cookies came to America through the Dutch in New Amsterdam in the late 1620s. The Dutch word "koekje" was Anglicized to "cookie" or cooky. The earliest reference to cookies in America is in 1703, when "The Dutch in New York provided...in 1703...at a funeral 800 cookies...”.
The most common modern cookie, given its style by the creaming of butter and sugar, was not common until the 18th century.
