Cotton candy, in all of its colorful, billowy glory, is one of those around-the-clock treats capable of evoking adolescence with one abolition bite.
In creamy blush bushels, it pervades fairgrounds and festivals. Held top aloft auspicious crowds, it bobbles its way amid rows at antic events. In the attendance of abrupt bazaar lions, its airy, aerial fibers are stuffed, soothingly, into the mouths of abashed toddlers.
Even in New York's Four Seasons Restaurant, area dishes arise aloft $80, the cake is served to assemblage post-meal, at no charge. "This restaurant is a basilica of food," says the eatery's maître d. "People appear actuality and they're not too comfortable. Giving them affection bonbon gives them their adolescence back."
Cotton bonbon is aswell decidedly odd: It's fabricated up mostly of air and sugar, and contains alone trace amounts of additive and aliment coloring. The accepted serving, which is beyond than the archetypal child's head, weighs beneath than one ounce. Odder yet, the avant-garde apparatus of affection bonbon and its machines stems from a birth of dentists.
Cotton candy's ancient origins date aback to 15th aeon Italy. Here, in specialty bakeries off cobblestoned streets, amoroso abstract would be aloft in a pan and "flicked out" with forks to actualize decorative, chiffon strands. Due to the arduous action and the top amount of its alone ingredient, this "spun sugar" was alone produced in baby quantities, alone for the uber-wealthy.
For 300 years, the cake backward in fashion—but alone a part of aristocratic circles. Ornately-spun Easter eggs and "webs of gold and silver" were attenuate delicacies for top association Europeans. Italians were decidedly accomplished at amoroso spinning; as one historian describes, Venetians "moulded it into a absurd tableaux of animals, allegorical figures, buildings, birds, and pastoral scenes." If Henri III of France visited Venice in the backward 1500s, he was advised to a absurd feast at which 1,286 items —including the tablecloth —were spun of sugar. For the boilerplate aborigine though, the amusement remained broadly inaccessible.
Centuries later, in 1897, a 37-year-old dentist from Tennessee absitively the bathetic appurtenances should be enjoyed by everyone.
Born in Nashville in 1860, James Morrison's passions were abnormally conflicting. He excelled in dentistry academy (by 1894, he was named President of the Tennessee State Dental Association), but was aswell a cake enthusiast with a affection for comestible advancement. By the mid-1890s, he patented several accessories — one which extracted oils from cottonseed and adapted them to lard, and addition which chemically antiseptic Nashville's bubbler water.
But Morrison's better advance came in 1897, if he commutual with John C. Wharton, an old pal and adolescent confectioner. Together, the two advised and co-patented what they alleged the "electric bonbon machine." Utilizing centrifugal force, the accessory rapidly spun and broiled amoroso through through baby holes until it was creamy and about 70% air. They alleged the new amusement "fairy floss," formed the "Electric Bonbon Company," and spent several years perfecting the action afore debuting it to the public.
Morrison's aboriginal apparent (1899).
At the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition (more bargain accepted as the 1904 World's Fair), the duo alien their product, affairs it in baby board boxes for 25 cents anniversary (about $6 today)—nearly bisected the acceptance amount to the fair. Despite its top price, the bonbon accessory was a accident success. Over 184 days, Morrison and Wharton awash 68,655 boxes, grossing $17,163.75 ($438,344 in 2014 dollars).
The World's Fair, which housed 35,000 athirst attendees and had ahead been the birthplace of hot dogs, peanut butter, ice chrism cones and added allegorical treats, accustomed bogie floss's success by captivation a appropriate "confectioner's day."
Following the fair, a 1905 advertisement in The New York Times touted the new "Wonderful Bonbon Machine" as a aloft breakthrough, with a new bargain price:
"Perhaps you accept apparent the abstruse amphitheater man eat handfuls of affection on the stage. You can do the aforementioned affair with the bonbon accessory that this new Bonbon Spinning Apparatus turns out. It is acceptable to eat and lasts a continued time, and doesn't amount abundant money — 5 to 10 cents."
An aboriginal advertisement for the Electric Bonbon Machine.
While the dentist's apparatus thrived, it accepted to be capricious over time. As the aboriginal of its kind, it was bedeviled by its abecedarian nature: It rattled, about shut off, overheated, and was difficult to calibration and reproduce. In 1921, anon afterwards Morrison's 17-year apparent expired, addition active dentist, Josef Lascaux, took it aloft himself to "reinvent" the machine, but he never followed through with his apparent and his advancements didn't absolutely pan out.
He did, however, bread the appellation "cotton candy," and advertise it to accouchement at his practice. Over time, this new name replaced the old one (though affection bonbon is still alleged "fairy floss" in Australia).
It wasn't until 1949, with the addition of spring-loaded bases, that the affection bonbon apparatus accustomed its aboriginal abundant upgrade—so abundant that the aggregation amenable for the innovation, Gold Medal Products (Cincinnati, Ohio), constructs and sells about all affection bonbon machines in assembly today. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, a array of advancements automatic the absolute process—from spinning to packaging—and expedited the action of creation.
Today's machines are compact, efficient, and fast: They authority up to three pounds of amoroso at a time, circuit at ante of up to 3,450 revolutions per minute (RPM), and can aftermath four servings per minute. Industrial articles run anywhere from $500 to $2,000—not a bad investment, because the claims one pitch makes: "In as little as two aboveboard anxiety of attic or adverse space, you can abode this easy-to-use banknote architect that will always accompany in AT LEAST 90 cents accumulation on every dollar sold!" As the capacity of affection bonbon are sparse—air, baby amounts of sugar, additive and dye—each confined yields about 100% profit.
If you're a dentist searching to chase in the footsteps of affection bonbon entrepreneurs, there's addition upside to consider: an access in cavities.
This column has been republished with permission from biographer Zachary Crockett and Priceonomics. For more, you can chase Zachary on Twitter here or Google Plus here.
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