Cookie

Cookie is commonly a small sweet baked good, typically round, made from flour, sugar, fat, and often eggs. It comes in many varieties, including chocolate chip, oatmeal raisin, sugar, butter, and shortcrust-style cookies, with regional specialties. Cookies are made by creaming fat and sugar, adding eggs and dry ingredients, and folding in flavorings or mix-ins before baking until edges color and centers set. Textures range from crisp to chewy. In American English the term cookie often denotes softer varieties, while crisper baked goods are sometimes called biscuits in other dialects. The word derives from the Dutch koekje meaning little cake, and entered English via early settlers; the broader tradition of small baked confections stretches across medieval Europe and the Middle East. The chocolate chip cookie, created in the 1930s by Ruth Wakefield at the Toll House Inn, is among the best known modern examples.

In computing, a cookie is a small data file stored by a web browser on the user's device. Cookies support session management, remember login status and preferences, and enable tracking for analytics and advertising. They can be first-party (set by the visited site) or third-party (set by external domains). Cookies may be persistent or session-based, and may include flags such as HttpOnly, Secure, and SameSite to improve security and privacy. Users can manage cookies through browser settings, including blocking, deleting, or restricting cross-site cookies. Privacy and data-protection concerns have led to laws and regulations in many jurisdictions, and some browsers provide extensive controls over cookie behavior and third-party cookies.