In the annals of food and memory, I know of no story so peculiar as the mysterious disappearance—now more than three decades ago—of the Guerrilla Cookie from the shelves of Midwestern food co-ops. A confection with a cult following, it rose to popularity in Madison, Wisconsin, in the 1970s. Then, sometime around 1990, it was gone.
Nobody seemed to know why. Years went by, and the lore and legend around it only grew. Stories began to appear in local news outlets about the search for the original recipe, and about the reclusive baker who was determined to keep it a secret. When a Madison food co-op introduced a new imitation Guerrilla Cookie in 2004, the store got mail orders from around the country. But it made some people angry—it didn’t taste the same. The ersatz product was shortly discontinued. Online discussions bubbled up in the following years, in which people discussed their attempts to recreate the cookie themselves, based on their memories of the ingredients. A woman in Madison set up a blog in 2010, and over two years, she published seventy-eight variations on the imagined recipe, consulting with others about whether there were or were not raisins, and what kind of nuts it had, and whether the white flecks people remembered may have been coconut. The Wisconsin Alumni Association held a culinary event in 2012 featuring fondly remembered foods from Madison’s past. A dining director employed by the university’s Memorial Union brought two versions of his attempt to recreate the Guerrilla Cookie and published one of his recipes on the alumni association site.
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