Cotton Candy

Cotton candy, whether it’s consumed at the Flying Horses or purchased in plastic bags at Ben and Bill’s, is as much a part of Martha’s Vineyard summers as the Agricultural Fair or Illumination Night. Its history, though, goes beyond carousels and into the royal houses of Europe, for the history of spun sugar predates that of cotton candy and harks back to the Middle Ages, when European cooks created fantasies of sugar for the decoration of aristocratic tables, including fruits that looked real and sugar flowers with dew drops still on them. These confections were more like blown glass than the froth of spun sugar that has been a staple at fairs and the like since it was first introduced at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair as Fairy Floss.

Cotton candy is an international favorite that appears on fair menus under various names. In Australia, it maintains its original name of fairy floss, but in the United Kingdom and Ireland, it’s known as candy floss. The French are a bit more poetic and refer to the light confection as Barbe à grand papa or grandfather’s beard. Whatever it is called, the wispy filaments of sugar are produced by a system that was originally patented by Americans John C. Wharton and William Morris, but later improved upon by Thomas Patton. The 1970s produced yet another innovation on the classic–a new machine was invented that mass produced cotton candy in the strips that can now be found sold under various names at candy stores and the like.

No matter how it’s prepared, cotton candy is experiencing a resurgence and even appears on the dessert menus of several high-end dining establishments, accompanied by everything from strawberries to champagne. It even has its own day; December 7th is National Cotton Candy Day. The candy has come a long way from the fairgrounds, but for most of us cotton candy is a fond remembrance of childhood summers, sunshine, and carefree days.