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Candy floss facts 6

Cotton Candy is a Product of the Industrial Revolution

While "spun sugar" was popular among the wealthy in the mid to late 19th century, and is usually presumed to be the same as cotton candy as we know it today, the present-day treat is in fact a very different thing. While spun sugar was made by drizzling caramelized sugar onto a broom handle to work into shapes and patterns, cotton candy is caramelized sugar run through a centrifuge to create a treat that's over 50% air. This wasn't possible until the early twentieth century, most notably 1899, when the recent technological advances allowed John C. Warton and William J. Morrison (a candy maker and a dentist, respectively), to invest in and patent "certain new and useful improvements on candy machines."

This newly improved candy machine was intended for the creation of spun sugar, as it had been known until that point; it replaced the pan-over-fire technique with heating via an electrical heating element, and replacing flinging the liquid with a fork over household cleaning accessories with a funnel perforated with thousands of minuscule holes, through which the caramelized sugar was pushed through with such force and speed it cooled without being allowed to recrystallize. The spun sugar of the present day incorporates special ingredients to keep this from happening – Warton and Morrison’s "fairy floss" machine achieved this with nothing but electricity and air, resulting in a confectionery that, while similar to its stovetop predecessor, was also inherently different in structure, texture and technique, and achievable only through the sudden technological advances in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.