Indiana State Fair - 1933 Cotton Candy

You're getting a bonus food post today. I couldn't resist putting down a few words about two classic fair foods: Cotton Candy and Funnel Cake.

What those of us in the US and Canada know as cotton candy goes by other names across the globe. In the UK, Ireland, New Zealand, and South Africa it is known as candy floss and in Australia it goes by the moniker fairy floss. In all cases, though, it’s simply spun sugar. The first record of cotton candy shows up in Europe in the 1700s, but a mechanical means for producing the confection didn't appear until 1897. Ironically, the mechanism we use to create cotton candy owes its existence to a dentist. Dr. William Morrison teamed up with confectioner John C. Wharton to introduce their machine-made Fairy Floss at the 1904 World's Fair. Their product went over well and the team sold 68,655 boxes at roughly the equivalent of $6 a box in today’s terms. In 1921 another dentist, Dr. Joseph Lascaux, invented his own (similar) cotton candy machine and it is Lascaux’s patent which assigned the name “cotton candy” to the confection that shows up on midways across the country.

Another midway staple is the funnel cake, a deep fried pastry that typically is doused in powdered sugar or some sugar-laden fruit syrup just in case the oil from the deep fryer didn't add enough calories. The history of this pastry probably came to American shores with the Pennsylvania Dutch. The name, of course, comes from the cooking method – a funnel-shaped contraption is used to dispense a stream of batter into the hot oil.

 This lovely image of a little girl enjoying a cloud of cotton candy nearly as big as she is comes from the 1933 Indiana State Fair. In the heart of the depression, when everything was uncertainty, it's joy on a stick.