Early Egyptians may have invented the first fig roll - a simple pastry made with fig paste and a flour-based dough.[1] In the Middle Ages, the arab physician Ibn Butlan is recorded to have recommended eating figs with biscuits, or sugared bread - an early instance of what could be considered a fig roll.[2]
Fig rolls were popular with British immigrants in the United States in the late 19th century.[3]
A plastic tray of mass-produced Fig NewtonsFig Newtons
Fig Newtons are a popular mass-produced cookie similar to a fig roll. In 1892 James Henry Mitchell, a Florida engineer and inventor, received a patent for a machine that could produce a hollow tube of cookie dough and simultaneously fill it with jam.[4] The machine consisted of two funnels, one inside the other, with the outer funnel creating the dough tube and the inner funnel filling that tube with fig jam.[3]
At the same time, Philadelphia baker and fig lover Charles Roser was developing a recipe for a pastry based on the British homemade fig roll. Roser approached the Cambridgeport, Massachusetts based Kennedy Biscuit Company, who agreed to take on production and sales.[3]
Kennedy Biscuit Company had recently become associated with the New York Biscuit Company, and after merger to form Nabisco, trademarked the product as the Fig Newton. The cookie was named after the Massachusetts town of Newton. It was one of the first commercially-produced baked goods in the United States.[3]
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