Wednesday is my night to cook dinner. But it is also a weekly opportunity for me to share some fantastic drivel—things you didn’t care you didn’t know—with you, dear reader.
July 31, 2013 is Cotton Candy Day. Yes, I’m aware that cotton candy is more of a dessert than a dinner, but my research for dinner options yielded very little fruit. July 31 is also Flag Day in Hawaii, so I did add coconut flavoring to my cotton candy. A token gesture, to be sure, but I was really excited about making homemade cotton candy!
I should mention that “National Cotton Candy Day” in the United States is on December 7th. Cotton candy seems like a strange way to commemorate Pearl Harbor Day, however, so I prefer the less nationalistic “Cotton Candy Day” celebrated July 31st.
Cotton candy is made by spinning strands of molten sugar around a stick. “Spun sugar” shows up in European history as early as the 18th century, but as it was expensive and time-consuming to make, it was a luxury confection for the rich folk.
Machine-spun cotton candy was invented in 1897 by the dentist William Morrison and confectioner John C. Wharton and first introduced to a wide audience at the 1904 World’s Fair as “Fairy Floss” with great success, selling 68,655 boxes at 25¢ per box (equivalent to $6 per box today). Joseph Lascaux, a dentist from New Orleans, Louisiana, invented a similar cotton candy machine in 1921. In fact, the Lascaux patent named the sweet confection “cotton candy” and the “fairy floss” name faded away, although it retains this name in Australia. |from Wikipedia
What a brilliant business partnership: a dentist and a confectioner. Reminds me of a line from a Tom Lehrer song, “The Old Dope Peddler”:
He gives the kids free samples
because he knows full well
that today’s young innocent faces
will be tomorrow’s clientele.
(pictures of my cotton candy attempt after the cut)
