When Were Cookies Invented? An Honest History

When were cookies invented?

Cookies were not invented on one known date by one known baker. Small sweet baked goods existed under many names long before the English word cookie appeared. Smithsonian describes seventh-century Persian pastries as modern-cookie predecessors; English recipe collections later recorded biskets, sugar cakes and jumbals; Merriam-Webster dates the relevant English use of cookie to 1779; and Amelia Simmons printed recipes headed "Cookies" and "Another Christmas Cookey" in 1796.

That is the short, honest answer. The longer story is useful because it shows why a modern cookie can be a crisp wafer, a soft drop cookie, a molded spice biscuit or a dense shortbread and still belong to the same loose family.

A cookie timeline without a made-up birthday

The dates mark surviving evidence, not clean handoffs from one inventor to the next. Recipes travelled, names overlapped, spellings changed and many cooks never published what they made.

Were the first cookies made in Persia?

The safest answer is that Persia supplies early documented predecessors, not a certificate of invention.

A Smithsonian history of decorated cookies describes two Sassanid Persian foods as modern-cookie predecessors as early as the seventh century. One, khushkananaj, used a sesame-oil dough with a sugar-and-almond filling. The other, kulaija, was shaped in a mold.

Those details matter more than the headline. They show several features that still feel familiar: a sweetened dough, a discrete hand-sized piece, a filling in one form and decorative shaping in another. They do not establish an unbroken recipe line to a chocolate chip cookie, nor do they prove that no earlier culture made a small baked sweet.

What a baker can borrow: the idea of a cookie has always been broader than a flat round disc. Filled, molded and stamped cookies are not modern departures from the category; they belong to an old habit of making small pieces individually.

What came before the word cookie in Europe?

Look at old recipe titles and the tidy origin story falls apart in a useful way. A circa-seventeenth-century English manuscript catalogued by the Wellcome Collection includes recipes for short cake, almond cakes, French macaroons, biskett bread, sugar cakes, jambals, jumbals and biskett rings. These were not necessarily the same food. Their coexistence shows a busy family of small cakes and biscuits before cookie became the usual American label.

Hannah Woolley's 1670 cookbook The Queen-like Closet makes that variety concrete. The digitized text includes "Bisket-Cakes" based on eggs, sugar and flour; thin rolled, pricked biskets with yeast, butter and seeds; and "Diet Bread or Jumbolds," rolled thin, tied in knots and baked on buttered plates. The public-domain edition is worth browsing because the original headings resist modern neatness: bisket could describe several different formulas and finishes.

The English word biscuit also has its own long history. Merriam-Webster traces it through Anglo-French words for twice-cooked bread and gives a first known use in the fourteenth century. That helps explain the naming split still heard today: in British English, biscuit covers much of the territory where American English uses cookie.

It does not mean a sweet modern cookie descended directly from ship's hardtack. Royal Museums Greenwich describes ship's biscuit as a durable flour-and-water provision dried for voyages. It belongs in the history of the broad word biscuit, but it is a different formula serving a different job.

What a baker can borrow: old labels are unreliable texture instructions. Read the formula and method. Eggs whipped with sugar, a yeast-raised dough rolled thin and a flour-water travel ration may all have been called some version of biscuit, yet they will not behave alike in an oven.

Where did the word cookie come from?

Merriam-Webster's entry for cookie derives the word from Dutch koekje, the diminutive of koek, or cake. In plain English, the root means a little cake. The dictionary dates its first known use in the relevant English sense to 1779.

That date is a language milestone, not an invention date. People were already baking small sweet goods; English speakers simply had several names available. Cookie became especially at home in American English, while biscuit remained the broader everyday term in Britain.

The Dutch root also makes sense of early American spellings. A recipe might say cookie, cookey or a plural form without indicating a fundamentally different food. Standardized spelling came later than the kitchen habit.

What a baker can borrow: category names change more slowly than recipes but are never exact formulas. If you want to recreate an old cookie, the ingredient ratios, thickness, shaping and oven cue tell you more than the heading alone.

Why is Amelia Simmons's 1796 cookie recipe important?

Amelia Simmons's American Cookery, published in Hartford in 1796, is an unusually firm marker because the book survives and the recipes can be read. The Library of Congress catalogues it as the first cookbook written by an American and published in the United States; a digitized 1796 copy lets readers inspect the page rather than rely on a repeated anecdote.

The book contains one recipe headed "Cookies" and another headed "Another Christmas Cookey." The first calls for 1 pound of sugar, 2 1/2 pounds of flour, 4 ounces of butter, coriander seed and pearlash. It tells the cook to roll the dough about 1/2 inch thick, cut it, bake it for 15 to 20 minutes in a slack oven and store the finished cookies, which the recipe says will remain good for three weeks.

Those are the original quantities and directions, not a modern recipe recommendation. Flour strength, ingredient processing, pan material and oven control have changed, and the period instruction gives no oven temperature in degrees. We are not converting it into cups or a home formula here because a responsible adaptation would need an actual test bake.

Pearlash is the especially revealing ingredient. It was an alkaline chemical leavener used before modern baking powder. Unlike yeast, it did not require a long fermentation. The recipe therefore captures a transition that helped cooks make small baked goods with a different kind of lift.

What a baker can borrow: thickness and visual judgment were central instructions before thermostatic ovens. For a modern recipe, weigh and portion evenly so the pieces finish together, then use the recipe's stated edge, surface and center cues alongside the clock. The clock is a check, not the only evidence.

Did cookies begin as oven tests or travel food?

You will often read that the first cookies were tiny pieces of cake batter baked to test an oven. You will also see their origin tied directly to portable travel biscuits. Both stories feel plausible. Neither supplies the one documented invention moment that the confident version implies.

A small test portion would have been practical in an oven without a temperature dial, but "practical" is not the same as "this is how all cookies began." The surviving seventeenth- and eighteenth-century recipes show deliberately shaped, seasoned and named foods, not merely scraps whose only purpose was checking heat.

Travel biscuits are well documented too, but their durability came from a lean formula and thorough drying. Sweet cookies used richer combinations of sugar, fat, eggs, nuts, spices or flavoring. The branches share size, portability and some vocabulary; that is not proof that one is the sole parent of the other.

The honest conclusion is less cinematic and more convincing: bakers in different places had many reasons to make dough in small pieces. Small items portion easily, bake faster than a large cake or loaf, travel well when dry and accept individual shapes or decorations. Several traditions could develop those advantages without waiting for one inventor.

How did ovens and leaveners change cookies?

Read the old directions and two limitations jump out. First, heat was described by feel: a "slack" oven, an oven "not too hot," or a direction to bake without overdoing it. Second, a cook chose among eggs, yeast, pearlash or no added leavener, each producing a different structure.

Temperature dials and standardized chemical leaveners eventually made recipes easier to repeat across kitchens. They did not make judgment obsolete. A modern oven can run hotter or cooler than its setting, pan color changes browning and two dough portions of different mass will not finish together.

That is why a current recipe should state both measurements and observable cues. Our guide to why cookies come out flat follows that same logic: spread is not a mystery when you isolate fat temperature, flour amount, leavener, dough temperature, pan temperature and actual oven heat.

What a baker can borrow: change one variable at a time. Historical formulas varied enormously, and modern cookies do too. If you alter the sugar, fat, leavener and portion size together, you cannot tell which change produced the new texture.

When was the chocolate chip cookie invented?

Here the record is much narrower. Ruth Wakefield published her "Chocolate Crunch Cookie" recipe in the 1938 edition of Toll House Tried and True Recipes. A 2025 Library of Congress account says food historians regard it as the first chocolate chip cookie recipe. Framingham State University's Ruth Wakefield collection independently identifies that 1938 publication.

The familiar story says the cookie happened by accident when chocolate failed to melt into dough. The newer Library of Congress account points to Wakefield's later description of the addition as deliberate. There is no need to preserve the accident tale when the documented cook said otherwise.

This milestone did not invent the whole cookie category. It created a particular combination within a category already centuries old. If the history has made you hungry, our chewy chocolate chip cookie recipe explains how melted butter, sugar balance, an extra yolk, portion mass and doneness cues shape one modern version. It is our own formula, not a claim to reproduce Wakefield's 1938 recipe.

What a baker can borrow: a new cookie often comes from a controlled change to a known dough. Keep the base formula legible, record the change and judge the result after cooling. A warm cookie and a cooled cookie do not have the same structure.

So how old are cookies?

The answer depends on what you mean.

• Cookie predecessors: at least as old as the seventh-century Persian examples described by Smithsonian.
• Recognizable European relatives: clearly present in seventeenth-century recipe collections under several names.
• The English word cookie: first known to Merriam-Webster from 1779.
• A printed American recipe headed "Cookies": documented in Amelia Simmons's 1796 cookbook.
• The chocolate chip cookie: documented through Wakefield's 1938 publication.

Those statements can all be true because they answer different questions. The category is old; the English name is younger; individual styles have their own histories.

Frequently asked questions

Who invented cookies?

No single inventor is known. Small sweet baked goods developed across several traditions and appeared under names including biskets, sugar cakes, jumbals and cookies. Surviving recipes give dated evidence, but they do not identify the first person ever to make a cookie-like food.

What country did cookies come from?

There is no single-country answer for the entire category. Smithsonian identifies seventh-century Persian pastries as cookie predecessors, Dutch supplied the English word's root, English collections preserve many related forms and American cookbooks helped establish the word cookie. A specific cookie style may have a much narrower origin.

What was the first cookie called?

There is no verified first cookie with one verified name. Historical sources use overlapping terms such as bisket, sugar cake, jumbal, cookey and cookie. Treating one of them as the first requires a definition the historical record does not provide.

Were cookies invented to test oven temperature?

That is a popular explanation, but it should not be presented as a proven universal origin. Baking a small test portion would have been practical before temperature dials, yet surviving recipes also describe deliberately formulated and shaped small cakes and biscuits meant as finished foods.

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