Who invented the oreo

As of , it was estimated that billion Oreo cookies have been sold since , planting it firmly at the top of cookie sales and winning over the hearts of millions. The original recipe and signature look of the Oreo has not changed much, but Nabisco has been pumping out limited new looks and flavors for years, right beside the classic.

The company started selling various versions of the cookie as its popularity grew. In , Nabisco released its celebrated Double Stuf Oreos. A few of the other most welcomed varieties and themes created over the years include:. Through ambitious new flavors of the cookie, the design of the chocolate discs has been a constant, outside of color changes.

The wafer design that has stuck around for the longest and was brought into existence in has remained much the same since then. As far as the recipe of the Oreo goes, the delicious filling that has contributed to the success of the cookie has evolved very little. It was created by Nabisco's "principal scientist" Sam Porcello, who is often referred to as "Mr.

Nabisco and the world agree that the Oreo recipe and design are far from broken, so there is no need to fix them. Oreos are well-loved just as they are and are sure to be around for many years to come. Actively scan device characteristics for identification.

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Measure content performance. No wonder the Oreo has become the most powerful cookie in the world, with more than billion sold to date. A hexagonal ship's biscuit, painted by an anonymous sailor, and showing evenly spaced docker holes, circa , National Maritime Museum. Conspiracy theories aside, the origins of 3D biscuitry are both pragmatic and decorative.

The practice of punching holes in biscuits is known as "docking," and has been done by bakers for centuries in order to prevent uneven puffiness and promote flat crispness. According to British cookery writer Elizabeth David, a pre-mechanization docker was "a dangerous-looking utensil consisting of sharp heavy spikes driven into a bun-shaped piece of wood. Meanwhile, across Europe, a parallel and equally time-honored tradition of decorative waffle irons and wooden molds emerged, used to emboss religious symbols on communion wafers, coats of arms on Italian pizzelle , and courtly imagery on German springerle.

The turn of the 19th century saw the birth of the industrial biscuit, and, with it, the marriage of these two morphologies—docking and decorating—into an automated production line. In the late s, two cousins, both called Thomas Vicars, designed the first embossing and cutting machine , capable of punching holes, stamping decorations, and cutting out up to 80 biscuits per minute from a moving sheet of dough.

The dies were necessarily hand carved until engraving machines were introduced in the early s. Thin, hard biscuits, such as the Rich Tea and Morning Coffee , are still made in almost exactly the same way. But the true golden age of biscuit engineering did not dawn until the invention of the rotary molder in the late s. This technology, albeit updated with variable speed controls, advanced non-stick coatings, and quality sensors, is still used to make Oreos and most other thick embossed biscuits today.

The cookie dough is forced into negative molds, which imprint patterns, brand names, and docker holes. A scraping knife "D" in the diagram above scrapes off any excess dough to give a flat bottom, and the formed biscuits peel away onto a conveyor belt to be baked. This, then, is the enduring technology behind the blend of baking science and aesthetic appeal that is an embossed cookie.

But what does the design signify, if anything? Cookie conspiracists believe that the antenna symbol is actually a Cross of Lorraine, a symbol identified with the famed Knights Templar. Now, who designed the emboss? Evidence points to William Turnier.

However, while Nabisco admits that a man by the name of William Turnier worked for them for fifty years, they deny that he developed the design. That said, his son and drawn proof indicate otherwise.

Turnier joined the company in , working in the mail room. He eventually worked his way up to the engineering department, helping make the dies that made the cookies, the industrial-sized cookie cutters as it were.

Not really, though he did admit that the design, while beautiful and resembling more mysterious symbols, probably had nothing to do with the Knights Templar. As for the stuff between the intricately-designed cookies, the filling- it was made partially of lard — pig fat — until In , Nabisco embarked on a nearly three year revamping process of the filling to take the lard out.

By December , the Oreo cookie was lard-free, but there was another problem — the lard had been replaced by partially hydrogenated vegetable oil; yes, the very much not good for you trans fats. Or, perhaps more aptly, less bad for you.

The article was originally published by Today I Found Out. Featured Image Source: VisualHunt. Stay updated with all the insights.