June 27, 2024 • 30 mins
Dentists originally created this fairground favorite, and the physics behind it is fascinating. In this classic episode, Anney and Lauren put their spin on the history and science of cotton candy.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
Hello, and welcome to Savor Protection of iHeartRadio. I'm Annie
Reese and I'm Lauren vogel Baum.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
And today we have a classic episode for you about
cotton candy. Yes, yes, yes, uh huh. All right, So
this originally aired in July of twenty eighteen. What innocent
youths we were.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
Then speaking of? Though?
Speaker 2 (00:32):
So okay, spoiler alert, Annie is real? What was real
mad about cotton candy in this episode?
Speaker 3 (00:39):
Annie? Are you still mad about cotton candy?
Speaker 1 (00:42):
It's funny that you asked, because my knee jerk when
you said cotton candy. I was like, Oh, that's still
it's still it's still around.
Speaker 4 (00:53):
Oh it still hurts you?
Speaker 1 (00:54):
Yeah it does. I mean, I'm sure I'm not the
only one, but they are just memory I have from
being a youth. Where I was, I was usually roped
into a task I didn't want to do, and cotton
candy was a big, messy.
Speaker 3 (01:16):
Pain, uh for me, literal pain.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
Yeah, yeah, it was a pain, but it was I
was in a very small marching band. There weren't that
many people, and the volunteer the volunteer staff was run
by my best friend's mom, and so she kind of
roped me in, and my mom and my dad.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
And someone had to make the cotton candy.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
Someone had to make the cotton candy. So yes, Lauren,
the answer is yes. But I think it has mellowed
a bit. I think it's it's mellowed from where I
was at this point. That's good.
Speaker 4 (01:55):
That's that's good. That's good to hear.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
I'm glad for you.
Speaker 3 (01:58):
Than sorry up a painful topic.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
That's all good. Was there any particular reason this was
on your mind to bring back?
Speaker 2 (02:09):
It's a summary topic I was kind of looking through,
and I didn't want to rerun our quiescently frozen Snack
on a stick episode quite yet, because we've done a
couple episodes about brands really recently, and that's a very
brand heavy episode. So so yeah, it was like cotton candy. Yeah,
(02:33):
It's like it's like festival and fair time out there,
and so yeah, yeah, it's a fun one. Despite or
perhaps because of, your extremely strong reaction to cotton candy.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
I can't the imagery, the smell, the stickiness, it just
it just comes back to me every time I think
about it. I remember a very specific time and place,
and it was not a time and place that I liked.
It was a time and place where I was tired
and wanted to go.
Speaker 5 (03:09):
Well, I am so sorry to bring it back up,
except I and I hope that everyone out there is
going to have a nicer time listening to this one
than you did recording it or in the studio right now.
But I suppose with that, to avoid further further pain,
(03:35):
let us lead former Annie and Lauren take it away.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
Hello, and welcome to food Stuff.
Speaker 4 (03:51):
I'm Any Ray and I'm Lauren vocal bam, and today
we're talking about cotton candy, the delightful thing that everyone
finds delightful.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
That's where you're wrong, Lauren. I have such strong feelings
about cotton candy. I feel like I'm about to get
into a fight right now. And in the outline when
I was doing this series, it is littered with all
caps literal booze. Yes right at the top.
Speaker 4 (04:23):
Oh yeah, yeah, she's I don't think i've seen Annie
this angry since the Tipping episode.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
Oh yeah, that was a more legitimate reason to be angry.
Speaker 4 (04:33):
That was certainly a more legitimate reason because at this point,
I don't you call it one of your arch nemesies.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
Yeah. Oh yeah. You know, everyone's got to have at
least one food arch Nemesis and cotton candy. It turns
out as one. And it kind of took me by
surprise because I guess I haven't really thought about cotton
candy in a while, and it just it was there,
It was lying underneath.
Speaker 4 (05:03):
I don't I do not understand this. I'm like Annie,
who hurt?
Speaker 1 (05:07):
You?
Speaker 5 (05:08):
Like?
Speaker 2 (05:08):
What? Like?
Speaker 1 (05:09):
What happened? Oh? I can tell you what happened. I
was in marching band, okay, And as part of marching band,
you had to volunteer at the concession stand okay, at
the football stadium, yes, okay, and also at various fairs,
(05:33):
local festivals. And I was in charge of the cotton
candy machine.
Speaker 4 (05:38):
Oh okay.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
It was on wieldy, It came with no instructions. It
would burn your fingers and stick everywhere, and it was
a thankless, thankless job. Oh man, Oh wow, I need
like a cotton candy therapist.
Speaker 4 (05:58):
You apparently do. Oh I mean, okay, I see you.
You're you're seeing, You're in You're in a safe place.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
Thank you, Lauren.
Speaker 4 (06:08):
We're gonna get this. We're gonna get through this episode together.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
Okay, we're gonna try not to have two new flashbacks
of just like pink fluff sticking everywhere and hearing people like,
where's that cotton candy? Annie? Yeah? Wow?
Speaker 4 (06:25):
Uh all right, So cotton candy, what what is it?
Speaker 1 (06:33):
Well, it is a food that I find you you
don't see much outside of a carnival or amusement park.
I personally can't think of a time I had it
outside of those situations.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
Uh.
Speaker 4 (06:47):
We had a machine at a housetuff Wick's Christmas party
a few years back. There was it was that year
that we like skyped with Santa.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
Oh I didn't know Santa was on Skype. Yeah, I
knew you could follow him on Google Maps.
Speaker 4 (06:59):
Yeah, yeah, I know. They skyped Santa in to talk
to us. I think that was the last Rock Sand party.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
She threw great parties.
Speaker 4 (07:08):
She did one of our ex ex managers, Rock Sand
Lovely Woman.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
Anyway. Cotton candy, it's made up of primarily one thing,
and that is sugar and maybe food dies and flavorings,
but mostly sugar.
Speaker 4 (07:24):
Yes, cotton candy is a non crystalline form of sugar candy.
It's made from sugar syrup that's cooked and then spun out,
like literally into these brittle threads that are pliable to
the touch because they're so dang thin, some like fifty
microns wide, which is something like the width of a
human hair. Cotton candies frequently served as in a sort
(07:46):
of like rough ball on a stick or paper cone
and looks a little bit like a cotton ball or
a cloud, or like fiberglass, one of these things you
should not eat. Cotton candy is technically an amorphous solid
like glass or huh.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
All right, all right. You can get all types of
flavors of cotton candy, blue, raspberry, banana, raspberry, watermelon, chocolate.
Speaker 4 (08:09):
There's artisanal cotton candy, earl, gray, horchata, lightea, green tea, mango, chili, champagne,
champagne cotton candy. But the baseline cotton candy flavor is
just vanilla. It's like pink vanilla, so it doesn't I mean,
and it's also got probably a little bit of like
caramelization flavor in there somewhere, but mostly vanilla things I
(08:34):
never realized.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
Yeah, well, if you look at the nutrition value of
cotton candy is not no no, but I mean of fair.
Speaker 3 (08:48):
Foods, Oh yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
Because for one out serving it's got about one hundred
and five calories. Those are mostly sugar calories, and that
does make it almost one hot undred percent profit after
you've like invested in the machine.
Speaker 4 (09:04):
And I guess electricity to heat it. Sure, there is
that one hundred and five calories serving only about twenty
six grams of sugar, which is about two thirds of
what's in a can of coke. It's really mostly air.
And yeah, as you said, like as fair ground foods go, like,
it is certainly not the worst you can do.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
Oh, no, more than more than once in the past,
like two weeks, people have brought up fried butter in
my presence and I'm still curious, curious, horrified, curious.
Speaker 4 (09:37):
I've never had it either.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
So our listener sent in message about the Texas Fair
and Cheer saying that they had fried margarita's and I
am really curious about that.
Speaker 4 (09:51):
Huh. I wonder if it's one of those like like
like jello cube kind of situations.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
Maybe we really will find a way to fry just
about anything here. And there's the USA, A I bet
there's fried cotton candy.
Speaker 4 (10:07):
Oh, I'm positive there is. Now that you mention it.
You know, calories just find a way. Calories find a way.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
I'm pretty sure. Jeff Golbloom said that, Yes, I made
that joke in a recent podcast. He's on my brain lately.
Speaker 4 (10:20):
I guess he's on everyone's brain.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
Sure, thank you, Lauren. Anyway, hmm, well, let's talk a
little bit about how it's made. If we look at
a semi automated machine making cotton candy, it can hold
about three pounds of sugar spinning at over three four
hundred revolutions a minute, and that turns out about four
servings in that minute.
Speaker 4 (10:43):
And let's talk a little bit about how that works. So, Okay,
a cotton candy machine works like this. You heat sugar
in a metal cylinder to what's called in candy making,
the hard crack stage that's used to make hard candies,
toffee stuff like that. That's about three hundred degrees fahrenheit
or one hundred and forty nine celsius, right in that
(11:04):
sort of range. When sugar is that hot, it's typically
a liquid, and that liquid is then literally spun out
of the cylinder through tiny tiny holes in it. When
the sugar comes into contact with the air, it cools
off so fast that it hardens instantaneously without having a
chance to crystallize again. It's trapped in this glassy state
(11:26):
in the form of long, thin threads. You can collect
the threads as they spin out of the cylinder, or
let them collect on the inside edges of a bowl
that you place the cylinder in.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
I read that you used to get free cotton candy
at the end of a meal at Four Seasons in
New York City.
Speaker 4 (11:45):
Huh, I believe it. I mean I never went there.
It's closed now hypothetically they're rebooting it like later this year.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
She just did a looking at her watch motion.
Speaker 4 (11:57):
Even though I'm not wearing a watch and it doesn't
say anything about Four Seasons.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
And also an audio medium that you frequently have discussed. Eh. Well,
here's another weird thing about cotton candy. And I'm really
trying to contain my emotions here, but National Cotton Candy
Day is December seventh.
Speaker 4 (12:19):
That's a strange time for I mean, probably the summer
days were just already filled up.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
I didn't know they're like any day that's free pearl
Harbor happen this day cotton candy.
Speaker 4 (12:32):
I didn't think that anything. I mean I thought they
could overlap anyway, Yeah, December seventh. Yeah, but it's not
just a thing in the United States. It's also called
candy floss in the UK, fairy floss in Australia, sugar
thread in Italy. I mean like an Italian and Papa
is beard in France, labarb apapa. Oh, I'm not making
(12:52):
that up. I mean, yeah, it makes sense. It's yeah, yeah,
it's very beard like. Sure, both of us were again
making a physical gesture, Yes we were. And this is
one of the foods that has a pretty concrete history
and we will get into that as soon as we
get back from a break for a word from our sponsor,
(13:24):
and we're back, Thank you, sponsor.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
Yes, thank you. And the history of this one does
remind me very much of our popsicle episode no quiescently
Frozen Confections.
Speaker 4 (13:35):
Oh oh yes, oh do me, good catch, good catch
to me.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
We haven't heard from them yet, but any day now
we could hear a knock on our podcast studio door. Okay.
What I mean by that is it is fairly new.
Before it was called cotton candy, it was called spawn sugar,
and that does go back to fifteenth century Italy. They
had these big vats of melting sugar that they'd spin
(13:59):
around with a four and broom handle. That's pretty much
what I was doing at those football games. This method
was used to make fancy caramel nest around crocum bouche
and the like, and it's still possibly sometimes used.
Speaker 4 (14:15):
Oh sure, yeah, yeah, spung glasses still or spun sugar
glass is definitely still a thing.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
Very pretty. I've never really seen it, and then I
looked it up for this episode.
Speaker 4 (14:22):
Yeah, very poky, but very pretty.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
Very poky, noted noted other European chefs would make golden
rings that resembled glass. So yes, this was first a
rich person's food.
Speaker 4 (14:34):
Oh yeah, sugar was expensive and it takes time to
work with it.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
Absolutely, And speaking of in the sixteenth century, Francis Henri
the third went to Venice for an official state visit,
and he was welcomed with an entire meal of sugar
two and eighty six items down to the sugar spun
cutlerly and napkin and tablecloth. And Marie Antoine Querem, we've
(15:02):
spoken about him several times. Yeahs he would make all
kinds of sugar constructions in seventeen ninety six, The Experienced
English Housekeeper included a recipe for sweetmeats covered in a
sugary web. But if we're talking about the fluffy cloud
(15:22):
thing that kids get at fairs, that was far more recent,
like eighteen ninety seven recent. Our story begins with a dentist,
A dentist, A dentist.
Speaker 4 (15:37):
Yes, he was also only getting ink.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
I know, I need to shell out. I need to
like go have a cool down after this. Maybe we
should go up to the roof and I should get
some kind of candy and try to recapture my youth
before the football games. Really right, Yeah, yeah, maybe we should,
Maybe we should, maybe we should well report back on that.
Speaker 4 (16:02):
Absolutely so.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
This dentist was also an author of children's stories, and
he was based in Nashville, Tennessee. His name was William
James Morrison, and he was a friend of Woodrow Wilson,
and along with a friend of his who worked in
the candy biz, John C. Wharton, he came up with
what they called the Electric Candy Machine. Yeah, and in
the outline I wrote, oh here we go, and all
(16:25):
caps this is the root of my problem, Like if
I had a time machine, I'd go back. No, I wouldn't.
I wouldn't anyway. What this machine did was melt sugar
in a spinny chamber spinning at three four hundred revolutions
a minute, and then air would push the sugary substance
out through a mesh cage and into the outer chamber,
resulting in the fluffy, stringy stuff that we call cotton candy. Yes,
(16:48):
and stringy because fifteen microns in diameter, like Lauren mentioned before.
At the time, though, it was called fairy floss because dentist. Oh,
I guess, and maybe very Fuck.
Speaker 3 (17:00):
That's cute.
Speaker 4 (17:01):
Yeah, it's cute.
Speaker 1 (17:02):
It's got two f's alliteration always good.
Speaker 4 (17:06):
It's a nice mental image.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
Yeah. I don't know why we're saying this, like we're
trying to justify that they called it parents.
Speaker 4 (17:15):
I'm just I'm just happy that you found something to
be happy about in this episode. Annie, trying to dwell
on it as long as possible.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
I'll uh, yeah, thank you. I'll hold on to that
throughout the rest. Morrison also helped invent the process behind
Nashville's first water treatment plan. Oh, and not only that,
he tasked his brain with coming up with a lard
substitute using cotton seed. And not only that, he was
named president of the Tennessee State Dental Association in eighteen
(17:43):
ninety four. And the anger came back in right here,
and I went on this whole side rant about dentist
and why was he trying to find this?
Speaker 4 (17:54):
Like why would he invent a machine for sugar if
not to cause more cabage?
Speaker 1 (17:58):
Yeah, a hole can There is the theory that, yes,
he's just trying to cause more cavities. And ah, I
figured you got kind candy, but we won't go into that.
It debuted on a large scale at the nineteen oh
four Saint Louis World Fair. And I don't think we've
ever mentioned, but this world fare lasted for seven months.
Speaker 4 (18:18):
Oh yeah, it wasn't like a single weekend.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
Yeah. I think that's what I originally thought when I
was first hearing about these world fairs, that they were
kind of like, yeh, get away for a day. Nope,
seven months. By now, Morrison and Wharton had sold the
patent to the National based Electric Candy Machine Company, and
twenty five cents would get you a box of fairy floss.
This was half of the cost of admission by the way,
(18:42):
so nothing just new that people snapped up almost sixty
six thousand boxes anyway, almost half a million in today's money.
Who Yeah, the machine won most of novel device in
the way of electrical machinery. They started leasing the machines
Warton Morrison did for two hundred dollars a year or
(19:04):
twenty five dollars a month. And let's also mention that
at this very same fair we got peanut butter, hot dogs,
iced tea, and Hamburgers, brands like Doctor Pepper and Popsicles
as America. Oh right, there also a lot of topics
we've covered.
Speaker 3 (19:22):
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
A year after the World Fair they got a patent
for their machine, and a year after that candy stores
could buy the fairy Floss machine. Very little exchange about
this machine to this day. They're more reliable, that's one thing.
The early models were really loud and easily sidelined.
Speaker 4 (19:39):
Like like knocked right off their axis. Yeah yeah, and
just jumbling around too much.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
Yeah. Simultaneously, Thomas Patten got a patent for caramelized sugar
made with a fork. He eventually added in a gas
fired rotating plate, and Fairy Floss took on the name
Catton candy, at least in the US in the nineteen twenties.
And you won't this, but it comes to us from
another dentist in the candy business, Joseph Alasco. Lasco tried
(20:06):
to improve on the faults of Wharton and Morrison's machine,
but Alas no diice. Oh and he was selling this
stuff to his patients. By the way, just if you
want to have your own conspiracy theories, yeah, reach your
own decisions. Yes, we are saying nothing one way or
the other, but perhaps inflection is saying enough. Cincinnati's Gold
(20:31):
Metal Products came out with a spring base for the
fairy floss machines that improved production in nineteen forty nine,
and to this day they are very close to holding
a monopoly of cotton candy machines.
Speaker 4 (20:41):
Yeah okay, yeah, that spring loaded bases just makes it
way less dangerous, as it turns out.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
Yeah. They also came up with the technique patented in
nineteen fifty one for rolling out a paper thin, perfectly
tapered paper that was perfect for cotton candy. Ah oh
for yeah, yeah, exactly, there you go. And before the
nineteen seventies you would be hard pressed to find a
(21:07):
cotton candy machine outside of a fair circus. But that
changed in nineteen seventy two with the advent of a
machine that automatically manufactured and packaged cotton candy. So hello
mass production.
Speaker 3 (21:20):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 4 (21:21):
And the way that these work is by spinning the
threads of sugar.
Speaker 3 (21:26):
The little little.
Speaker 4 (21:27):
Cylinder thing spits out not onto a bowl or onto
a cone, but onto a conveyor belt, and the conveyor
belt then pulls the threads into a machine that uses
these teflon coded rollers to kind of bundle them into
this big airy block, which is then cut into individual
segments and sealed into air tight bags. It's important that
the bags are airtight because air contains moisture and water
(21:49):
melts sugar. Yeah, so yeah, so you don't want moisture
in there. No sealed bags shipped to fair grounds and
grocery stores across the country for really inferior cotton candy product.
According to me, we did.
Speaker 1 (22:05):
We did have a discussion about this before the podcast starts.
And I have strong feelings about cotton candy as as
is clear, but so does Lauren about fresh versus supermarket.
Speaker 2 (22:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (22:15):
Yeah, if you're gonna have cotton candy.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
You have it fresh.
Speaker 4 (22:17):
That's the only way, the only way to fly.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
Did you have a preferred flavor?
Speaker 4 (22:22):
I think just regular plain cotton candy flavor cotton candy,
which I guess is vanilla.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
Now is that pink or blue? It's pink?
Speaker 4 (22:30):
I think it was both. I think it was frequently both. Okay,
I know that I literally cannot remember ever having a
different flavor of cotton candy. I remember friends having it
and me going, uh.
Speaker 5 (22:43):
Like.
Speaker 4 (22:45):
You like like trend chaser, Yeah, like like, how dare
you have that green apple flavored cotton candy?
Speaker 1 (22:52):
What is this a now? And later ooh boy?
Speaker 4 (22:58):
When you were a child, did you have a have
a favorite flavor?
Speaker 1 (23:01):
I feel like cotton candy to me, I agree that
I would never have guessed it was vanilla. To me,
it was more of a texture experience, right, sweet yea
extra experience because it kind of gets like almost cho weird.
Speaker 3 (23:14):
Sure, totally, yeah, as.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
It's exposed to this alive in your mouth.
Speaker 4 (23:19):
Yeah, So it wasn't really.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
A flavor so much as just like sugar that had
an interesting texture thing.
Speaker 4 (23:25):
Texture experience. Yeah, no, no, I totally feel you. We're
going to talk a little bit more about how that
texture experience comes about the physics and chemistry of cotton candy.
But first we're going to take one more quick break
for a word from our sponsor.
Speaker 1 (23:49):
And we're back. Thank you, sponsor, Yes, thank you.
Speaker 4 (23:52):
So this is not the first candy that we're talking
about here on food stuff. We did talk about marshmallows once,
and y'all may remember from that episode if you have
listened to it, that candy making is objectively horrifying. Oh
it is, yeah, because it generally involves melting sugar, and
melten sugar is edible, napalm, dangerous stuff, as Annie can
(24:13):
well tell you. Oh absolutely, okay, all right. Many candies
do start with just one ingredient, sugar aka granulated crystals
of sucrose. There's frequently a little bit of water involved, too,
because the way that you make candy out of grains
of sugar is generally that you use heat to turn
(24:36):
the nice, orderly crystal structure of the sucros molecules into
disorderly liquid goop. Adding a little bit of water to
the mix helps you manage the pace of that. But
cotton candy plays fast and loose, fine grained sugar goes
straight into that heating cylinder and breaks down into liquid,
(24:59):
and okay, as it it turns out, sugar does not
have a single precise melting point. The temperature at which
its crystals break down actually varies based on how quickly
you heat it. If you heat sugar slowly, those crystals
will break down at lower temperatures. If you heat it quickly,
it can withstand higher temperatures before it melts. And I
(25:19):
could be wrong. Any chemists out there check in, but
I think that this might actually be the trick to
making cotton candy possible, because when you heat sugar past
a certain point, you'll go beyond busting apart these sucros
molecules from each other in out of their crystalline form.
You'll start actually busting apart the molecules themselves. The sucrose
decomposes into glucose and fructose as it gets hotter, which
(25:44):
those then lose water and react with one another, forming
hundreds of new and tasty aromatic compounds. That's caramelization. But
you don't want that with cotton candy, or at least
not a whole lot of it. So exposing the sugar
to sudden high heat let's melt without caramelizing mm hmm.
And the sudden change back to room temperature when the
(26:06):
liquid sugar is expressed out through that spinning cylinder, combined
with the enormous surface area of the of the thin, thin,
thin threads allowing heat to dissipate quickly, all of that
makes the sucroose molecules cling up in solid form again,
but this time their structure is not orderly and crystalline,
but disorderly and amorphous. It's sort of like the like
(26:28):
the difference between a quartz crystal pendant and a window pane.
Ah okay, all right, Like like left to its own devices,
the molecules will naturally order themselves in this very particular
crystalline way, but through particular heat treatment, we can form
them into any shape we like. And in the case
of cotton candy, that shape that we like is superfine
(26:48):
threads that melt in your mouth.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
Well, if you know what you're doing, you can form them. No,
it was the machine's fault. Don't blame yourself.
Speaker 4 (27:01):
And yeah, no, that was they. At the very least,
it should have come with instructions. Someone should have told
me what someone I mean, you were a teenager and
they gave you something that was heeding something too, certainly
above three hundred degrees, and they were just like, good
luck kid.
Speaker 1 (27:16):
Yeah, And yet I did it every Friday for like years.
Speaker 4 (27:23):
You never let you were never like hey, hey, Barry,
you come, you come get the Cutton candy machine.
Speaker 1 (27:29):
Today I did try to like con this one parent
into helping me, and he like he did it for
maybe maybe seven minutes and then just walked away and
he's like, I'm not making it anymore. WHOA, yeah wow.
Speaker 4 (27:44):
So I mean, man, adults failing you.
Speaker 1 (27:48):
Yeah, every turn. I know. It's like a very chame
version of Harry Potters exactly.
Speaker 4 (27:54):
Yeah. Well, I'm glad that you've lived through that. It's
helped make you the person that you are today.
Speaker 1 (28:01):
You are so kind. I obviously have some issues to
work through when it comes to cotton candy, and I
appreciate everyone bearing with me as I attempt to wade
through the trauma that is working in the high school
band concession stand.
Speaker 4 (28:22):
I think that everyone understands. I think that you know,
we all have our we all have our cotton candy.
Speaker 1 (28:27):
We do all have our cotton candy. And I do
not begrudge or I try not to begrudge people for
liking cotton candy because it is very cool. I mean, yeah,
that's neat science behind it. History is interesting, even if
I'm still a little perplexed about the dentist.
Speaker 4 (28:48):
So many dentists.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
Yes, yeah, but yeah, and enjoy way. I remember it
being a very fun experience as a child, mostly just
again because it was like kind of brightly colored and
an interesting experience, and it usually met you at some
kind of fun event.
Speaker 4 (29:03):
Right, yeah, the excitement, the kind of sugar rush.
Speaker 1 (29:07):
Yeah. Yeah, And that brings us to the end of
this classic episode. We hope that you enjoyed it, perhaps
more than I did, or you've got enjoyment or related
to my angst. Yeah, I do want people to be
happy about things, so I hope you know, sometimes it's
(29:29):
just a nice event, but yeah, I want you to
be happy and enjoy your summer treats. Maybe appreciate, appreciate the.
Speaker 3 (29:39):
Poor fan goes to them.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
Yeah, yeah, the band volunteer or anyone or anyone. Yes,
but I think it'd be cool if anybody wants to encountered.
Sounds so dangerous. If you've seen any cotton candy flavors
that are unique to you, or you've had any good
or bad cotton candy experiences.
Speaker 2 (30:04):
Or perhaps if you had a food service gig that
you would like to vent about just a little bit.
Speaker 1 (30:12):
Yeah, please, You're in good company. Please let us know.
You can email us at Hello, atsavorpod dot com.
Speaker 3 (30:21):
We are also on social media.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
You can find us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at
saver pod and we do hope to hear from you.
Speaker 3 (30:28):
Save is production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (30:30):
For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, you can visit
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever.
Speaker 3 (30:35):
You listen to your favorite shows.
Speaker 2 (30:37):
Thanks as always to our super producers Dylan Fagan and
Andrew Howard. Thanks to you for listening, and we hope
that lots more good things are coming your way.
Hello, and welcome to Savor Protection of iHeartRadio. I'm Annie
Reese and I'm Lauren vogel Baum.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
And today we have a classic episode for you about
cotton candy. Yes, yes, yes, uh huh. All right, So
this originally aired in July of twenty eighteen. What innocent
youths we were.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
Then speaking of? Though?
Speaker 2 (00:32):
So okay, spoiler alert, Annie is real? What was real
mad about cotton candy in this episode?
Speaker 3 (00:39):
Annie? Are you still mad about cotton candy?
Speaker 1 (00:42):
It's funny that you asked, because my knee jerk when
you said cotton candy. I was like, Oh, that's still
it's still it's still around.
Speaker 4 (00:53):
Oh it still hurts you?
Speaker 1 (00:54):
Yeah it does. I mean, I'm sure I'm not the
only one, but they are just memory I have from
being a youth. Where I was, I was usually roped
into a task I didn't want to do, and cotton
candy was a big, messy.
Speaker 3 (01:16):
Pain, uh for me, literal pain.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
Yeah, yeah, it was a pain, but it was I
was in a very small marching band. There weren't that
many people, and the volunteer the volunteer staff was run
by my best friend's mom, and so she kind of
roped me in, and my mom and my dad.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
And someone had to make the cotton candy.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
Someone had to make the cotton candy. So yes, Lauren,
the answer is yes. But I think it has mellowed
a bit. I think it's it's mellowed from where I
was at this point. That's good.
Speaker 4 (01:55):
That's that's good. That's good to hear.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
I'm glad for you.
Speaker 3 (01:58):
Than sorry up a painful topic.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
That's all good. Was there any particular reason this was
on your mind to bring back?
Speaker 2 (02:09):
It's a summary topic I was kind of looking through,
and I didn't want to rerun our quiescently frozen Snack
on a stick episode quite yet, because we've done a
couple episodes about brands really recently, and that's a very
brand heavy episode. So so yeah, it was like cotton candy. Yeah,
(02:33):
It's like it's like festival and fair time out there,
and so yeah, yeah, it's a fun one. Despite or
perhaps because of, your extremely strong reaction to cotton candy.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
I can't the imagery, the smell, the stickiness, it just
it just comes back to me every time I think
about it. I remember a very specific time and place,
and it was not a time and place that I liked.
It was a time and place where I was tired
and wanted to go.
Speaker 5 (03:09):
Well, I am so sorry to bring it back up,
except I and I hope that everyone out there is
going to have a nicer time listening to this one
than you did recording it or in the studio right now.
But I suppose with that, to avoid further further pain,
(03:35):
let us lead former Annie and Lauren take it away.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
Hello, and welcome to food Stuff.
Speaker 4 (03:51):
I'm Any Ray and I'm Lauren vocal bam, and today
we're talking about cotton candy, the delightful thing that everyone
finds delightful.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
That's where you're wrong, Lauren. I have such strong feelings
about cotton candy. I feel like I'm about to get
into a fight right now. And in the outline when
I was doing this series, it is littered with all
caps literal booze. Yes right at the top.
Speaker 4 (04:23):
Oh yeah, yeah, she's I don't think i've seen Annie
this angry since the Tipping episode.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
Oh yeah, that was a more legitimate reason to be angry.
Speaker 4 (04:33):
That was certainly a more legitimate reason because at this point,
I don't you call it one of your arch nemesies.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
Yeah. Oh yeah. You know, everyone's got to have at
least one food arch Nemesis and cotton candy. It turns
out as one. And it kind of took me by
surprise because I guess I haven't really thought about cotton
candy in a while, and it just it was there,
It was lying underneath.
Speaker 4 (05:03):
I don't I do not understand this. I'm like Annie,
who hurt?
Speaker 1 (05:07):
You?
Speaker 5 (05:08):
Like?
Speaker 2 (05:08):
What? Like?
Speaker 1 (05:09):
What happened? Oh? I can tell you what happened. I
was in marching band, okay, And as part of marching band,
you had to volunteer at the concession stand okay, at
the football stadium, yes, okay, and also at various fairs,
(05:33):
local festivals. And I was in charge of the cotton
candy machine.
Speaker 4 (05:38):
Oh okay.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
It was on wieldy, It came with no instructions. It
would burn your fingers and stick everywhere, and it was
a thankless, thankless job. Oh man, Oh wow, I need
like a cotton candy therapist.
Speaker 4 (05:58):
You apparently do. Oh I mean, okay, I see you.
You're you're seeing, You're in You're in a safe place.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
Thank you, Lauren.
Speaker 4 (06:08):
We're gonna get this. We're gonna get through this episode together.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
Okay, we're gonna try not to have two new flashbacks
of just like pink fluff sticking everywhere and hearing people like,
where's that cotton candy? Annie? Yeah? Wow?
Speaker 4 (06:25):
Uh all right, So cotton candy, what what is it?
Speaker 1 (06:33):
Well, it is a food that I find you you
don't see much outside of a carnival or amusement park.
I personally can't think of a time I had it
outside of those situations.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
Uh.
Speaker 4 (06:47):
We had a machine at a housetuff Wick's Christmas party
a few years back. There was it was that year
that we like skyped with Santa.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
Oh I didn't know Santa was on Skype. Yeah, I
knew you could follow him on Google Maps.
Speaker 4 (06:59):
Yeah, yeah, I know. They skyped Santa in to talk
to us. I think that was the last Rock Sand party.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
She threw great parties.
Speaker 4 (07:08):
She did one of our ex ex managers, Rock Sand
Lovely Woman.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
Anyway. Cotton candy, it's made up of primarily one thing,
and that is sugar and maybe food dies and flavorings,
but mostly sugar.
Speaker 4 (07:24):
Yes, cotton candy is a non crystalline form of sugar candy.
It's made from sugar syrup that's cooked and then spun out,
like literally into these brittle threads that are pliable to
the touch because they're so dang thin, some like fifty
microns wide, which is something like the width of a
human hair. Cotton candies frequently served as in a sort
(07:46):
of like rough ball on a stick or paper cone
and looks a little bit like a cotton ball or
a cloud, or like fiberglass, one of these things you
should not eat. Cotton candy is technically an amorphous solid
like glass or huh.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
All right, all right. You can get all types of
flavors of cotton candy, blue, raspberry, banana, raspberry, watermelon, chocolate.
Speaker 4 (08:09):
There's artisanal cotton candy, earl, gray, horchata, lightea, green tea, mango, chili, champagne,
champagne cotton candy. But the baseline cotton candy flavor is
just vanilla. It's like pink vanilla, so it doesn't I mean,
and it's also got probably a little bit of like
caramelization flavor in there somewhere, but mostly vanilla things I
(08:34):
never realized.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
Yeah, well, if you look at the nutrition value of
cotton candy is not no no, but I mean of fair.
Speaker 3 (08:48):
Foods, Oh yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
Because for one out serving it's got about one hundred
and five calories. Those are mostly sugar calories, and that
does make it almost one hot undred percent profit after
you've like invested in the machine.
Speaker 4 (09:04):
And I guess electricity to heat it. Sure, there is
that one hundred and five calories serving only about twenty
six grams of sugar, which is about two thirds of
what's in a can of coke. It's really mostly air.
And yeah, as you said, like as fair ground foods go, like,
it is certainly not the worst you can do.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
Oh, no, more than more than once in the past,
like two weeks, people have brought up fried butter in
my presence and I'm still curious, curious, horrified, curious.
Speaker 4 (09:37):
I've never had it either.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
So our listener sent in message about the Texas Fair
and Cheer saying that they had fried margarita's and I
am really curious about that.
Speaker 4 (09:51):
Huh. I wonder if it's one of those like like
like jello cube kind of situations.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
Maybe we really will find a way to fry just
about anything here. And there's the USA, A I bet
there's fried cotton candy.
Speaker 4 (10:07):
Oh, I'm positive there is. Now that you mention it.
You know, calories just find a way. Calories find a way.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
I'm pretty sure. Jeff Golbloom said that, Yes, I made
that joke in a recent podcast. He's on my brain lately.
Speaker 4 (10:20):
I guess he's on everyone's brain.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
Sure, thank you, Lauren. Anyway, hmm, well, let's talk a
little bit about how it's made. If we look at
a semi automated machine making cotton candy, it can hold
about three pounds of sugar spinning at over three four
hundred revolutions a minute, and that turns out about four
servings in that minute.
Speaker 4 (10:43):
And let's talk a little bit about how that works. So, Okay,
a cotton candy machine works like this. You heat sugar
in a metal cylinder to what's called in candy making,
the hard crack stage that's used to make hard candies,
toffee stuff like that. That's about three hundred degrees fahrenheit
or one hundred and forty nine celsius, right in that
(11:04):
sort of range. When sugar is that hot, it's typically
a liquid, and that liquid is then literally spun out
of the cylinder through tiny tiny holes in it. When
the sugar comes into contact with the air, it cools
off so fast that it hardens instantaneously without having a
chance to crystallize again. It's trapped in this glassy state
(11:26):
in the form of long, thin threads. You can collect
the threads as they spin out of the cylinder, or
let them collect on the inside edges of a bowl
that you place the cylinder in.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
I read that you used to get free cotton candy
at the end of a meal at Four Seasons in
New York City.
Speaker 4 (11:45):
Huh, I believe it. I mean I never went there.
It's closed now hypothetically they're rebooting it like later this year.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
She just did a looking at her watch motion.
Speaker 4 (11:57):
Even though I'm not wearing a watch and it doesn't
say anything about Four Seasons.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
And also an audio medium that you frequently have discussed. Eh. Well,
here's another weird thing about cotton candy. And I'm really
trying to contain my emotions here, but National Cotton Candy
Day is December seventh.
Speaker 4 (12:19):
That's a strange time for I mean, probably the summer
days were just already filled up.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
I didn't know they're like any day that's free pearl
Harbor happen this day cotton candy.
Speaker 4 (12:32):
I didn't think that anything. I mean I thought they
could overlap anyway, Yeah, December seventh. Yeah, but it's not
just a thing in the United States. It's also called
candy floss in the UK, fairy floss in Australia, sugar
thread in Italy. I mean like an Italian and Papa
is beard in France, labarb apapa. Oh, I'm not making
(12:52):
that up. I mean, yeah, it makes sense. It's yeah, yeah,
it's very beard like. Sure, both of us were again
making a physical gesture, Yes we were. And this is
one of the foods that has a pretty concrete history
and we will get into that as soon as we
get back from a break for a word from our sponsor,
(13:24):
and we're back, Thank you, sponsor.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
Yes, thank you. And the history of this one does
remind me very much of our popsicle episode no quiescently
Frozen Confections.
Speaker 4 (13:35):
Oh oh yes, oh do me, good catch, good catch
to me.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
We haven't heard from them yet, but any day now
we could hear a knock on our podcast studio door. Okay.
What I mean by that is it is fairly new.
Before it was called cotton candy, it was called spawn sugar,
and that does go back to fifteenth century Italy. They
had these big vats of melting sugar that they'd spin
(13:59):
around with a four and broom handle. That's pretty much
what I was doing at those football games. This method
was used to make fancy caramel nest around crocum bouche
and the like, and it's still possibly sometimes used.
Speaker 4 (14:15):
Oh sure, yeah, yeah, spung glasses still or spun sugar
glass is definitely still a thing.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
Very pretty. I've never really seen it, and then I
looked it up for this episode.
Speaker 4 (14:22):
Yeah, very poky, but very pretty.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
Very poky, noted noted other European chefs would make golden
rings that resembled glass. So yes, this was first a
rich person's food.
Speaker 4 (14:34):
Oh yeah, sugar was expensive and it takes time to
work with it.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
Absolutely, And speaking of in the sixteenth century, Francis Henri
the third went to Venice for an official state visit,
and he was welcomed with an entire meal of sugar
two and eighty six items down to the sugar spun
cutlerly and napkin and tablecloth. And Marie Antoine Querem, we've
(15:02):
spoken about him several times. Yeahs he would make all
kinds of sugar constructions in seventeen ninety six, The Experienced
English Housekeeper included a recipe for sweetmeats covered in a
sugary web. But if we're talking about the fluffy cloud
(15:22):
thing that kids get at fairs, that was far more recent,
like eighteen ninety seven recent. Our story begins with a dentist,
A dentist, A dentist.
Speaker 4 (15:37):
Yes, he was also only getting ink.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
I know, I need to shell out. I need to
like go have a cool down after this. Maybe we
should go up to the roof and I should get
some kind of candy and try to recapture my youth
before the football games. Really right, Yeah, yeah, maybe we should,
Maybe we should, maybe we should well report back on that.
Speaker 4 (16:02):
Absolutely so.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
This dentist was also an author of children's stories, and
he was based in Nashville, Tennessee. His name was William
James Morrison, and he was a friend of Woodrow Wilson,
and along with a friend of his who worked in
the candy biz, John C. Wharton, he came up with
what they called the Electric Candy Machine. Yeah, and in
the outline I wrote, oh here we go, and all
(16:25):
caps this is the root of my problem, Like if
I had a time machine, I'd go back. No, I wouldn't.
I wouldn't anyway. What this machine did was melt sugar
in a spinny chamber spinning at three four hundred revolutions
a minute, and then air would push the sugary substance
out through a mesh cage and into the outer chamber,
resulting in the fluffy, stringy stuff that we call cotton candy. Yes,
(16:48):
and stringy because fifteen microns in diameter, like Lauren mentioned before.
At the time, though, it was called fairy floss because dentist. Oh,
I guess, and maybe very Fuck.
Speaker 3 (17:00):
That's cute.
Speaker 4 (17:01):
Yeah, it's cute.
Speaker 1 (17:02):
It's got two f's alliteration always good.
Speaker 4 (17:06):
It's a nice mental image.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
Yeah. I don't know why we're saying this, like we're
trying to justify that they called it parents.
Speaker 4 (17:15):
I'm just I'm just happy that you found something to
be happy about in this episode. Annie, trying to dwell
on it as long as possible.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
I'll uh, yeah, thank you. I'll hold on to that
throughout the rest. Morrison also helped invent the process behind
Nashville's first water treatment plan. Oh, and not only that,
he tasked his brain with coming up with a lard
substitute using cotton seed. And not only that, he was
named president of the Tennessee State Dental Association in eighteen
(17:43):
ninety four. And the anger came back in right here,
and I went on this whole side rant about dentist
and why was he trying to find this?
Speaker 4 (17:54):
Like why would he invent a machine for sugar if
not to cause more cabage?
Speaker 1 (17:58):
Yeah, a hole can There is the theory that, yes,
he's just trying to cause more cavities. And ah, I
figured you got kind candy, but we won't go into that.
It debuted on a large scale at the nineteen oh
four Saint Louis World Fair. And I don't think we've
ever mentioned, but this world fare lasted for seven months.
Speaker 4 (18:18):
Oh yeah, it wasn't like a single weekend.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
Yeah. I think that's what I originally thought when I
was first hearing about these world fairs, that they were
kind of like, yeh, get away for a day. Nope,
seven months. By now, Morrison and Wharton had sold the
patent to the National based Electric Candy Machine Company, and
twenty five cents would get you a box of fairy floss.
This was half of the cost of admission by the way,
(18:42):
so nothing just new that people snapped up almost sixty
six thousand boxes anyway, almost half a million in today's money.
Who Yeah, the machine won most of novel device in
the way of electrical machinery. They started leasing the machines
Warton Morrison did for two hundred dollars a year or
(19:04):
twenty five dollars a month. And let's also mention that
at this very same fair we got peanut butter, hot dogs,
iced tea, and Hamburgers, brands like Doctor Pepper and Popsicles
as America. Oh right, there also a lot of topics
we've covered.
Speaker 3 (19:22):
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
A year after the World Fair they got a patent
for their machine, and a year after that candy stores
could buy the fairy Floss machine. Very little exchange about
this machine to this day. They're more reliable, that's one thing.
The early models were really loud and easily sidelined.
Speaker 4 (19:39):
Like like knocked right off their axis. Yeah yeah, and
just jumbling around too much.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
Yeah. Simultaneously, Thomas Patten got a patent for caramelized sugar
made with a fork. He eventually added in a gas
fired rotating plate, and Fairy Floss took on the name
Catton candy, at least in the US in the nineteen twenties.
And you won't this, but it comes to us from
another dentist in the candy business, Joseph Alasco. Lasco tried
(20:06):
to improve on the faults of Wharton and Morrison's machine,
but Alas no diice. Oh and he was selling this
stuff to his patients. By the way, just if you
want to have your own conspiracy theories, yeah, reach your
own decisions. Yes, we are saying nothing one way or
the other, but perhaps inflection is saying enough. Cincinnati's Gold
(20:31):
Metal Products came out with a spring base for the
fairy floss machines that improved production in nineteen forty nine,
and to this day they are very close to holding
a monopoly of cotton candy machines.
Speaker 4 (20:41):
Yeah okay, yeah, that spring loaded bases just makes it
way less dangerous, as it turns out.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
Yeah. They also came up with the technique patented in
nineteen fifty one for rolling out a paper thin, perfectly
tapered paper that was perfect for cotton candy. Ah oh
for yeah, yeah, exactly, there you go. And before the
nineteen seventies you would be hard pressed to find a
(21:07):
cotton candy machine outside of a fair circus. But that
changed in nineteen seventy two with the advent of a
machine that automatically manufactured and packaged cotton candy. So hello
mass production.
Speaker 3 (21:20):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 4 (21:21):
And the way that these work is by spinning the
threads of sugar.
Speaker 3 (21:26):
The little little.
Speaker 4 (21:27):
Cylinder thing spits out not onto a bowl or onto
a cone, but onto a conveyor belt, and the conveyor
belt then pulls the threads into a machine that uses
these teflon coded rollers to kind of bundle them into
this big airy block, which is then cut into individual
segments and sealed into air tight bags. It's important that
the bags are airtight because air contains moisture and water
(21:49):
melts sugar. Yeah, so yeah, so you don't want moisture
in there. No sealed bags shipped to fair grounds and
grocery stores across the country for really inferior cotton candy product.
According to me, we did.
Speaker 1 (22:05):
We did have a discussion about this before the podcast starts.
And I have strong feelings about cotton candy as as
is clear, but so does Lauren about fresh versus supermarket.
Speaker 2 (22:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (22:15):
Yeah, if you're gonna have cotton candy.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
You have it fresh.
Speaker 4 (22:17):
That's the only way, the only way to fly.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
Did you have a preferred flavor?
Speaker 4 (22:22):
I think just regular plain cotton candy flavor cotton candy,
which I guess is vanilla.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
Now is that pink or blue? It's pink?
Speaker 4 (22:30):
I think it was both. I think it was frequently both. Okay,
I know that I literally cannot remember ever having a
different flavor of cotton candy. I remember friends having it
and me going, uh.
Speaker 5 (22:43):
Like.
Speaker 4 (22:45):
You like like trend chaser, Yeah, like like, how dare
you have that green apple flavored cotton candy?
Speaker 1 (22:52):
What is this a now? And later ooh boy?
Speaker 4 (22:58):
When you were a child, did you have a have
a favorite flavor?
Speaker 1 (23:01):
I feel like cotton candy to me, I agree that
I would never have guessed it was vanilla. To me,
it was more of a texture experience, right, sweet yea
extra experience because it kind of gets like almost cho weird.
Speaker 3 (23:14):
Sure, totally, yeah, as.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
It's exposed to this alive in your mouth.
Speaker 4 (23:19):
Yeah, So it wasn't really.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
A flavor so much as just like sugar that had
an interesting texture thing.
Speaker 4 (23:25):
Texture experience. Yeah, no, no, I totally feel you. We're
going to talk a little bit more about how that
texture experience comes about the physics and chemistry of cotton candy.
But first we're going to take one more quick break
for a word from our sponsor.
Speaker 1 (23:49):
And we're back. Thank you, sponsor, Yes, thank you.
Speaker 4 (23:52):
So this is not the first candy that we're talking
about here on food stuff. We did talk about marshmallows once,
and y'all may remember from that episode if you have
listened to it, that candy making is objectively horrifying. Oh
it is, yeah, because it generally involves melting sugar, and
melten sugar is edible, napalm, dangerous stuff, as Annie can
(24:13):
well tell you. Oh absolutely, okay, all right. Many candies
do start with just one ingredient, sugar aka granulated crystals
of sucrose. There's frequently a little bit of water involved, too,
because the way that you make candy out of grains
of sugar is generally that you use heat to turn
(24:36):
the nice, orderly crystal structure of the sucros molecules into
disorderly liquid goop. Adding a little bit of water to
the mix helps you manage the pace of that. But
cotton candy plays fast and loose, fine grained sugar goes
straight into that heating cylinder and breaks down into liquid,
(24:59):
and okay, as it it turns out, sugar does not
have a single precise melting point. The temperature at which
its crystals break down actually varies based on how quickly
you heat it. If you heat sugar slowly, those crystals
will break down at lower temperatures. If you heat it quickly,
it can withstand higher temperatures before it melts. And I
(25:19):
could be wrong. Any chemists out there check in, but
I think that this might actually be the trick to
making cotton candy possible, because when you heat sugar past
a certain point, you'll go beyond busting apart these sucros
molecules from each other in out of their crystalline form.
You'll start actually busting apart the molecules themselves. The sucrose
decomposes into glucose and fructose as it gets hotter, which
(25:44):
those then lose water and react with one another, forming
hundreds of new and tasty aromatic compounds. That's caramelization. But
you don't want that with cotton candy, or at least
not a whole lot of it. So exposing the sugar
to sudden high heat let's melt without caramelizing mm hmm.
And the sudden change back to room temperature when the
(26:06):
liquid sugar is expressed out through that spinning cylinder, combined
with the enormous surface area of the of the thin, thin,
thin threads allowing heat to dissipate quickly, all of that
makes the sucroose molecules cling up in solid form again,
but this time their structure is not orderly and crystalline,
but disorderly and amorphous. It's sort of like the like
(26:28):
the difference between a quartz crystal pendant and a window pane.
Ah okay, all right, Like like left to its own devices,
the molecules will naturally order themselves in this very particular
crystalline way, but through particular heat treatment, we can form
them into any shape we like. And in the case
of cotton candy, that shape that we like is superfine
(26:48):
threads that melt in your mouth.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
Well, if you know what you're doing, you can form them. No,
it was the machine's fault. Don't blame yourself.
Speaker 4 (27:01):
And yeah, no, that was they. At the very least,
it should have come with instructions. Someone should have told
me what someone I mean, you were a teenager and
they gave you something that was heeding something too, certainly
above three hundred degrees, and they were just like, good
luck kid.
Speaker 1 (27:16):
Yeah, And yet I did it every Friday for like years.
Speaker 4 (27:23):
You never let you were never like hey, hey, Barry,
you come, you come get the Cutton candy machine.
Speaker 1 (27:29):
Today I did try to like con this one parent
into helping me, and he like he did it for
maybe maybe seven minutes and then just walked away and
he's like, I'm not making it anymore. WHOA, yeah wow.
Speaker 4 (27:44):
So I mean, man, adults failing you.
Speaker 1 (27:48):
Yeah, every turn. I know. It's like a very chame
version of Harry Potters exactly.
Speaker 4 (27:54):
Yeah. Well, I'm glad that you've lived through that. It's
helped make you the person that you are today.
Speaker 1 (28:01):
You are so kind. I obviously have some issues to
work through when it comes to cotton candy, and I
appreciate everyone bearing with me as I attempt to wade
through the trauma that is working in the high school
band concession stand.
Speaker 4 (28:22):
I think that everyone understands. I think that you know,
we all have our we all have our cotton candy.
Speaker 1 (28:27):
We do all have our cotton candy. And I do
not begrudge or I try not to begrudge people for
liking cotton candy because it is very cool. I mean, yeah,
that's neat science behind it. History is interesting, even if
I'm still a little perplexed about the dentist.
Speaker 4 (28:48):
So many dentists.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
Yes, yeah, but yeah, and enjoy way. I remember it
being a very fun experience as a child, mostly just
again because it was like kind of brightly colored and
an interesting experience, and it usually met you at some
kind of fun event.
Speaker 4 (29:03):
Right, yeah, the excitement, the kind of sugar rush.
Speaker 1 (29:07):
Yeah. Yeah, And that brings us to the end of
this classic episode. We hope that you enjoyed it, perhaps
more than I did, or you've got enjoyment or related
to my angst. Yeah, I do want people to be
happy about things, so I hope you know, sometimes it's
(29:29):
just a nice event, but yeah, I want you to
be happy and enjoy your summer treats. Maybe appreciate, appreciate the.
Speaker 3 (29:39):
Poor fan goes to them.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
Yeah, yeah, the band volunteer or anyone or anyone. Yes,
but I think it'd be cool if anybody wants to encountered.
Sounds so dangerous. If you've seen any cotton candy flavors
that are unique to you, or you've had any good
or bad cotton candy experiences.
Speaker 2 (30:04):
Or perhaps if you had a food service gig that
you would like to vent about just a little bit.
Speaker 1 (30:12):
Yeah, please, You're in good company. Please let us know.
You can email us at Hello, atsavorpod dot com.
Speaker 3 (30:21):
We are also on social media.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
You can find us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at
saver pod and we do hope to hear from you.
Speaker 3 (30:28):
Save is production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (30:30):
For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, you can visit
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever.
Speaker 3 (30:35):
You listen to your favorite shows.
Speaker 2 (30:37):
Thanks as always to our super producers Dylan Fagan and
Andrew Howard. Thanks to you for listening, and we hope
that lots more good things are coming your way.
Savor News
Hosts And Creators
Anney Reese
Lauren Vogelbaum
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