A humble oyster pail turned takeout icon: The American story of the Chinese food carton

It’s an icon, that small white receptacle made from a single piece of cardboard folded into a trapezoid-shaped box. Sometimes there’s a wire handle, sometimes a bright red graphic of a Chinese-style pagoda on the side. And inside, deliciousness.

The Chinese takeout container — at least, as it’s commonly seen in the United States — is actually about as American as it gets, with its mix of ingenuity, immigrant cultures becoming homegrown staples, and the desire for convenience (also known as sitting at home in your PJs.)

The idea of what is essentially a paper bucket dates to 1894, when inventor Frederick Weeks Wilcox was granted a patent for what he called “a new and useful improvement” for pails used to carry oysters. A single piece of material would be folded in such a way that it would have structural stability while also limiting the ways it could leak, and