Cotton candy
Encyclopedia
Cotton candy candy floss or candyfloss or candy buttox (UK
British English
British English, or English , is the broad term used to distinguish the forms of the English language used in the United Kingdom from forms used elsewhere...

, Ireland, New Zealand
New Zealand English
New Zealand English is the dialect of the English language used in New Zealand.The English language was established in New Zealand by colonists during the 19th century. It is one of "the newest native-speaker variet[ies] of the English language in existence, a variety which has developed and...

 and South Africa
South African English
The term South African English is applied to the first-language dialects of English spoken by South Africans, with the L1 English variety spoken by Zimbabweans, Zambians and Namibians, being recognised as offshoots.There is some social and regional variation within South African English...

), or fairy floss (Australia
Australian English
Australian English is the name given to the group of dialects spoken in Australia that form a major variety of the English language....

) is a form of spun sugar
Sugar
Sugar is a class of edible crystalline carbohydrates, mainly sucrose, lactose, and fructose, characterized by a sweet flavor.Sucrose in its refined form primarily comes from sugar cane and sugar beet...

. Since cotton candy is mostly air, a small initial quantity of sugar generates a tremendously greater final volume, causing servings to be physically large and voluminous. A typical serving on a stick is approximately one ounce
Ounce
The ounce is a unit of mass with several definitions, the most commonly used of which are equal to approximately 28 grams. The ounce is used in a number of different systems, including various systems of mass that form part of the imperial and United States customary systems...

/30 gram
Gram
The gram is a metric system unit of mass....

s and contains roughly 115 kilocalories. It is sometimes sold in bags containing several servings (see accompanying photos). Cotton candy is often served at fairground
Funfair
A funfair or simply "fair" is a small to medium sized travelling show primarily composed of stalls and other amusements. Larger fairs such as the permanent fairs of cities and seaside resorts might be called a fairground, although technically this should refer to the land where a fair is...

s or circus
Circus
A circus is commonly a travelling company of performers that may include clowns, acrobats, trained animals, trapeze acts, musicians, hoopers, tightrope walkers, jugglers, unicyclists and other stunt-oriented artists...

es. Food coloring
Food coloring
Food coloring is a substance, liquid or powder, that is added to food or drink to change its color. Food coloring is used both in commercial food production and in domestic cooking...

 is used to change the natural white color. A similar confectionery is the Persian Pashmak
Pashmak
Pashmak is a form of Persian candy floss / cotton candy, made from sesame and sugar. A common myth is that Pashmak is made with ant saliva, although this is not true...

, and the Turkish Pişmaniye
Pismaniye
Pişmaniye or pishmaniye is a Turkish sweet in fine strands made by blending flour roasted in butter into pulled sugar. It is sometimes garnished with ground pistachio nuts...

, although the latter is made with flour in addition to sugar.

History

Cotton candy was first recorded around the 1900s. At that time, spun sugar was an expensive, labor-intensive endeavor and was not generally available to the average person. Machine-spun cotton candy was invented in 1897 by the dentist William Morrison
William Morrison (dentist)
William James Morrison was a dentist from Nashville, Tennessee.He was an avid inventor and has a number of inventions to his credit. One of them is the first cotton candy machine, which he constructed in cooperation with John C. Wharton. This electric machine that melted sugar and then used force...

 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 the then-high price of 25¢, half the cost of admission to the fair. Fairy floss was renamed to "cotton candy" in the 1920s. In the 1970s an automatic cotton candy machine was created which made the product and packaged it. This made it easier to produce and available to sell at carnivals, fairs, and stores.

Tootsie Roll of Canada Ltd., the world's largest cotton-candy manufacturer, makes a bagged, fruit-flavored version called Fluffy Stuff
Fluffy Stuff
Fluffy Stuff is a brand of cotton candy that comes in a variety of fruit flavors, marketed by Tootsie Roll Industries, who acquired it in 2000....

.

The United States celebrates National Cotton Candy Day on December 7.

Production

Typical machines used to make cotton candy include a spinning head enclosing a small "sugar reserve" bowl into which a charge of granulated, colored sugar (or separate sugar and food coloring) is poured. Heaters near the rim of the head melt the sugar, which is squeezed out through tiny holes by centrifugal force
Centrifugal force
Centrifugal force can generally be any force directed outward relative to some origin. More particularly, in classical mechanics, the centrifugal force is an outward force which arises when describing the motion of objects in a rotating reference frame...

. Precolored sugar packaged specially for the process is milled with melting characteristics and a crystal size optimized for the head and heated holes; granulated sugar used in baking contains fine crystals which spin out unmelted, while rock sugar crystals are too large to properly contact the heater, slowing the production of floss.

The molten sugar solidifies in the air and is caught in a larger bowl which totally surrounds the spinning head. Left to operate for a period, the cottonlike product builds up on the inside walls of the larger bowl, at which point the machine operator twirls a stick, cone, or their hands around the rim of the large catching bowl, gathering the sugar strands into portions which are served on stick or cone, or in plastic bags. As the sugar reserve bowl empties, the operator recharges it with more feedstock. The product is sensitive to humidity, and in humid summer locales, the process can be messy and sticky.

Modern innovations in Cotton Candy equipment include vending machines which automatically produce single-servings of the product, developed in the United Kingdom and in Taiwan, and lighted or glowing sticks.

Machines

In 1972 the first automated machine was used for the production of cotton candy. Since then the creations and innovations of this machine have become greater and greater. They range in sizes from counter-top accessible to party and carnival size. In today’s world we can find machines that do so much at once, instead of its traditional use of having one flavor at a time. Today’s machines that are made for commercial use can hold up to 3 pounds of sugar and have compartments for storage of extra flavors. The rotating bowl at the top spins at 3,450 revolutions per minute. That is what creates the threadlike candy from the sugar that is melted.

Texture

Sticky and sweet, it dissolves quickly in the mouth (due to its amorphous nature) although it feels like wool
Wool
Wool is the textile fiber obtained from sheep and certain other animals, including cashmere from goats, mohair from goats, qiviut from muskoxen, vicuña, alpaca, camel from animals in the camel family, and angora from rabbits....

 to the touch. It does not have much of an aroma although the machine itself has a cooked sugar smell when in operation. When it comes in contact with moisture, it becomes sticky and damp. Because the sugar is hygroscopic, and has a very large surface area
Surface area
Surface area is the measure of how much exposed area a solid object has, expressed in square units. Mathematical description of the surface area is considerably more involved than the definition of arc length of a curve. For polyhedra the surface area is the sum of the areas of its faces...

, it will become coarser, harder and generally less "flossy" once exposed to the atmosphere.

External links

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