This food holiday celebrates Nabisco's trademarked version of the fig roll, a soft cookie with fig jam stuffing. Introduced in 1891 by Philadelphia baker Charles Roser, who invented and then patented a machine for inserting fig paste into thick pastry dough, the recipe was purchased by the Kennedy Biscuit Company of Cambridgeport, Massachusetts, and then mass produced. The Kennedy Biscuit Works, now known as Nabisco, named the new cookie after the neighboring town of Newton, Massachusetts.