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While many a New Yorker has ambled through Chelsea Market and been aware that it was once HQ to the National Biscuit Company, later called Nabisco, few know just what that means in terms of the vaunted annals of cookie history. It was there, 100 years ago, on March 6, 1912, that the Oreo cookie was born.
In the century since, more than 362 billion Oreos have been bought and bitten (or twisted and licked) around the world. “I know of few commercial products that have sold so well for so long,” says Andrew F. Smith, a culinary historian who teaches at the New School.
Before it was the National Biscuit Company, the west Chelsea complex was occupied by the New York Biscuit Company, an amalgamation of eight large bakeries that joined forces in 1890 and built a six-story baking factory on 10th Avenue. In 1898, the company merged with its rival, Chicago’s American Biscuit and Manufacturing, to form the National Biscuit Company. Before long, it was supplying half of the biscuit stock in the country, including the Oreo Biscuit as it was known in its early days.
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But, according to many food historians, the Oreo wasn’t the first of its kind. It was actually preceded by another sandwich cookie, the Hydrox. A small company called Sunshine Biscuit Company (later to be acquired by Keebler, which in turn was acquired by Kellogg) began selling its chocolate-and-cream sandwich biscuit in 1908. “Prior to that time, there were lots of cookies out there, but I know of nothing that was two cookies with a filling in between,” says Smith. “It was a game changer for the industry.”
While details are sketchy as to what sort of cookie copying may or may not have occurred between 1908 and 1912 — Becky Tousey, the associate director of corporate archives at Kraft, which bought Nabisco, brushed off talk of it — it is certain that the Oreo, launched four years after the Hydrox, quickly became the No. 1 cookie in America. A Hoboken grocer named S.C. Thuesen was the first to purchase the treats, selling them in bulk from a large yellow tin for 30 cents a pound. “The primary audience from the beginning was children and the middle class,” says Smith, noting that the cookie has always been relatively affordable.
The origin of the Oreo’s name is also shrouded in mystery, though many have speculated over the years. “The one that makes the most sense to me from a historical perspective is that the name really came from the sandwich of the cookies,” says Tousey, noting that the two “O’s” bookend the cookie’s name, just as the two sandwich cookies do with the creamy filling. Others have speculated that it’s related to the French word for gold, “or,” and the color of its early packaging, or the Greek word “oreo,” which means beautiful or nice.
The Oreo’s distinctive design has been noted for its beauty, and its had three distinct patterns. It began minimally, with the cookie’s name in the center and a simple wreath at its edge. A 1924 revamp was more ornate, with a circle surrounding the cookie’s name and a more complex wreath. The modern version is the most detailed, with its serrated edge and tiny, triangular four-leaf-clover-like pattern. It’s “traditional looking — it reminds me in some ways of the pattern on a manhole cover,” said Pulitzer Prize-winning architecture critic Paul Goldberger, who analyzed the cookie’s aesthetic on the occasion of its 75th birthday. “But the white filling looks modern, and together they seem like an ornate old building that has been given a new glass interior.” How very New York, indeed.
Imprints aside, there have, of course, been dozens of variations on the Oreo cookie over the years, from a short-lived lemon-filled variety in the 1920s to the much-loved Double Stuf Oreo, introduced in 1974. As the cookie has increasingly expanded into international markets — it’s now in more than 100 countries — intriguing variations have also sprung up. In Argentina there’s a “Duo” variety featuring banana- and dulce de leche-flavored filling, side by side. In China, the biggest foreign market, there are green tea ice cream flavored Oreos and “Double-Fruit” cookies with orange and mango or raspberry and blueberry fillings.
Some of NYC’s most talented chefs create their own Oreo in more haute gourmet forms. It’s a favorite cookie of Thomas Keller, whose Bouchon Bakery has named its version of the cookie, the TKO (Thomas Keller Oreo). “We make ours slightly larger and add our own touch of high-quality ingredients,” says Sebastien Rouxel, executive pastry chef for Keller’s restaurant group, which includes Per Se, Bouchon Bakery and the French Laundry in California.
Stephen Collucci, pastry chef at Colicchio & Sons, has also created his version of the Oreo. “It has a more sophisticated quality,” he says. “But it’s such a great cookie, my goal was to get as close to it as I could.” He uses it in gourmet nostalgic desserts, like ice-cream sandwiches, a red velvet parfait topped with his ersatz Oreo’s crumbs and a new peppermint stracciatella ice-cream milk shake topped with vanilla whipped cream and cookie crumbs. His cookie features melted bittersweet chocolate and ground-up cocoa nibs.
Oreo enthusiasm seems to know no bounds. The Oreo Facebook page has nearly 25 million “likes,” making it one of the most engaged in brands in social media. Meanwhile, Kellogg Co. unceremoniously discontinued the Hydrox in 2003 after the cookie was unable to compete with its dominant doppelgänger, leaving the Oreo to rule the sandwich cookie market. Says Smith: “There’s nothing else like it out there.”