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Speaker 1: Cotton Candy by Edward Hirsch. We walked on the bridge

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Speaker 1: over the Chicago River for what turned out to be

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Speaker 1: the last time, and I a cotton candy, that sugary air,

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Speaker 1: that sweet blue light, spun out of nothingness. It was

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Speaker 1: just a moment, really, nothing more. But I remember marveling

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Speaker 1: at the sturdy cables of the bridge that held us up,

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Speaker 1: and threading my fingers through the long and slender fingers

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Speaker 1: of my grandfather, an old man from the old world

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Speaker 1: who long ago disappeared into the nether regions. And I

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Speaker 1: remember that eight year old boy who had tasted the

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Speaker 1: sweetness of air which still clings to my mouth and

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Speaker 1: disappears when I breathe.

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Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 3: Hey, Welcome to Stuff to Blow your My name is

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Speaker 3: Robert Lamb.

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Speaker 1: And I am Joe McCormick. And that was I said

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Speaker 1: it in the opening. But again, that was the poem

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Speaker 1: Cotton Candy by the American poet Edward Hirsh. And that's

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Speaker 1: going to be relevant today because we're starting a couple

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Speaker 1: of episodes on the subject of cotton candy and some

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Speaker 1: of its historical predecessors. But I thought this would be

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Speaker 1: a good poem to feature, first of all, just because

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Speaker 1: I love it. It's very plainly stated, but very beautiful,

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Speaker 1: very evocative. There's something strong lurking in it about the

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Speaker 1: interplay of strength and permanence. On one hand, with the

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Speaker 1: imagery of the cables on the bridge and the kind

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Speaker 1: of tenacity of memory, but then on the other hand,

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Speaker 1: about ephemerality, like the fleetingness of human life and the

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Speaker 1: inherent nothing substance of cotton candy, which somehow feels after

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Speaker 1: it's eaten like it never existed, like it was never

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Speaker 1: a substance to begin with, and yet it persists as

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Speaker 1: a taste that clings to the mouth, as Hirsch says,

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Speaker 1: clings to the mouth and disappears when you breathe kind

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Speaker 1: of implying that there are some things that are ephemeral

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Speaker 1: and they disappear when we live. But anyway, to move

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Speaker 1: on to the subject, Yes, we're going to be talking

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Speaker 1: about cotton candy aka candy floss aka fairy flass. Now, Rob,

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Speaker 1: I don't know if you think along the same lines

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Speaker 1: as me here, but these alternate terms for cotton candy,

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Speaker 1: which I have encountered before, always struck me as incredibly

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Speaker 1: disgusting because, like a lot of American English speakers my age,

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Speaker 1: I assume the only time I ever used the word

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Speaker 1: floss is when referring to dental floss, and in fact,

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Speaker 1: for most of my life, I just assumed that the

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Speaker 1: dental application was the primary or even only meaning of

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Speaker 1: the word floss is dental flaws.

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Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, I mean, that's obviously the primary way I

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Speaker 3: use it, and the other usages of floss that I've

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Speaker 3: encountered are always, you know, expressly or I feel like

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Speaker 3: I got the the impression that they were derived from

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Speaker 3: dental floss, like everything begins with dental floss, and therefore

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Speaker 3: the idea of there being like a parallel usage of

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Speaker 3: it just didn't occur to me either.

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Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, So historically this is not the case. The

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Speaker 1: English word floss, from what I can tell, has uncertain

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Speaker 1: etymological roots. It might be related to the English word fleece,

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Speaker 1: which goes back to wool from a sheep or similar animal.

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Speaker 1: Or it might come from a French term flash, meaning

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Speaker 1: maybe wool or perhaps silk. But anyway, floss means fibers

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Speaker 1: like silk, wool, hair, or thread. So candy floss is

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Speaker 1: candy hair, which also doesn't sound very good. Maybe it's

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Speaker 1: just cultural familiarity because you also don't eat cotton, But

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Speaker 1: for some reason, to me, cotton candy is about as

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Speaker 1: appetizing as the terms for this substance get.

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Speaker 3: Yeah. Plus, at least like cotton has, you know, it's

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Speaker 3: organic in nature, and therefore it's like cotton cant that

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Speaker 3: just sounds straight good for you, right.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right, Yeah, it's health food.

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Speaker 3: When, of course, if I'm assuming everyone out there has

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Speaker 3: either had a cotton candy or some derivative cotton candy

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Speaker 3: or even counted it, you know that it is, as

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Speaker 3: the poem so wonderfully describes it, blue light spun out

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Speaker 3: of nothingness. It's sugary air. It's just sweetness, like aggressive

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Speaker 3: sweetness in this like strange, barely physical form. It just

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Speaker 3: melts in your mouth immediately. And of course I'm always

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Speaker 3: reminded of that video that we discussed in past episodes

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Speaker 3: about raccoons, where raccoon has given cotton candy and the

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Speaker 3: raccoon lowers it into the water as they are wont

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Speaker 3: to do, and then the raccoon is seemingly just horrified

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Speaker 3: when it melts away and just like instantly vanishes.

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Speaker 1: Just a diamond of sadness and disappointment. Yeah, a little video. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: another question to lodge here at the beginning. I think

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Speaker 1: maybe we can partially answer this as we go along,

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Speaker 1: But I was thinking, why is it that we associate

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Speaker 1: cotton candy with fairs and carnivals. Why is it something

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Speaker 1: you get at the amusement park or the county Fair

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Speaker 1: and other candies are not something like I mean, I

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Speaker 1: guess you can get you some sweet tarts at the

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Speaker 1: County Fair, but it's a particular kind of event associated

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Speaker 1: candy unlike many others.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, as we'll discuss, I mean, basically get

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Speaker 3: into the fact that it does have twentieth century origins

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Speaker 3: that are very tightly bound to the World's Fair, So

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Speaker 3: it kind of to a large extent, is born out

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Speaker 3: of the World's Fair. The technology to create it has

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Speaker 3: long been very mobile, works well with like a food

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Speaker 3: cart sort of a situation, but it does drag in

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Speaker 3: all these other additional aspects. Like I think of cotton candy,

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Speaker 3: which I have not had since I was a child

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Speaker 3: for obvious reasons, it makes me think of stickiness out

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Speaker 3: in public away from a place to wash your hands.

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Speaker 3: It makes me think of like sweating and eating cotton

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Speaker 3: candy at the same time. Like there's a certain grunginess

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Speaker 3: to the experience that is not, you know, altogether, you know,

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Speaker 3: unattractive to the childhood brain. But but you know, yeah,

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Speaker 3: it is closely associated with like an outdoor, dizzy environment.

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Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, I guess a lot of parents would

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Speaker 1: not be thrilled at the idea of like bringing home

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Speaker 1: a tub of cotton candy for their child to eat

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Speaker 1: at home.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, but kids won I mean it's bright, it's it's

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Speaker 3: amazing looking, it's novel, and I think all kids should

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Speaker 3: have it. You know, at least a few times. I

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Speaker 3: think I was asking my own child, was like like, yeah,

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Speaker 3: what was your favorite cotton candy that you ever had?

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Speaker 3: And they're like, oh, I think I only had it once,

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Speaker 3: And I think maybe it was more than once. But still, yeah,

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Speaker 3: I probably have been kind of limiting on the cotton candy.

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Speaker 3: Like it's one of those things as a parent when

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Speaker 3: you're as if you can get cotton candy, you might

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Speaker 3: be inclined to sort of steer them towards something else.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a great thing. To bring as a treat

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Speaker 1: to the children of someone else at their house. Hey,

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Speaker 1: kids play with this in the living room.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, because it's pure sugar, it's it's sticky, has no

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Speaker 3: real nutritional value, it's pure novel and therefore it is

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Speaker 3: the perfect thing to have it affair.

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Speaker 1: And that it's one of those foods where the appeal

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Speaker 1: of it is pure sensory novelty. Like it's really not

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Speaker 1: going to be like the best tasting candy you're going

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Speaker 1: to ever have. It's like, what's appealing about it is

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Speaker 1: that it is unusual, that it looks interesting, and that

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Speaker 1: it feels interesting in the mouth.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, we'll get into much later in this discussion. That

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Speaker 3: there are some traditions of cotton candy and some technologies

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Speaker 3: with cotton candy that are like pushing the boundaries of

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Speaker 3: what's possible, and they've managed to make it look even

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Speaker 3: more amazing, even more like some sort of a strange

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Speaker 3: blue sugar flame brought forth from another realm. But I

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Speaker 3: haven't tried it, and I suspect that the taste can

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Speaker 3: only be so complex because it is still is just

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Speaker 3: like an assault of sweetness. I would imagine. Yeah, I

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Speaker 3: feel like there's also concerning fars, there's the not quite

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Speaker 3: overt connection to be made between cotton candy and clown hair.

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Speaker 3: You know, clowns have bright colored hair that is often

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Speaker 3: in big poofy arrays that may resemble cotton candy. Uh

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Speaker 3: huh yeah yeah, And for me too, I'm also reminded

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Speaker 3: of Killer Clowns from Outer Space, the horror movie from

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Speaker 3: nineteen eighty eight, in which you have an array of

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Speaker 3: wonderfully grotesque and colorful clowns I think some of the

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Speaker 3: best horror movie clowns ever. And there are some key

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Speaker 3: sequences where we find out that they use cotton candy

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Speaker 3: to spin cocoons around their human victims.

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Speaker 1: I'd forgotten about that, yeah.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, and that wonderful usage. And I also it interesting

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Speaker 3: because obviously there's a comparison being made here between spun

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Speaker 3: cotton candy and spun silk cocoons. And you actually find

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Speaker 3: these connections made as well in some Chinese traditions with

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Speaker 3: particular confections that are at least a kin to cotton candy. Okay,

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Speaker 3: all right, so at this point we really should turn

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Speaker 3: to a very obvious question before we get into the

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Speaker 3: history and invention of cotton candy properly? What is it?

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Speaker 3: What is this strange blue sugar air that is summoned

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Speaker 3: out of some sort of a technological vat when a

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Speaker 3: man sticks to it like a paper cone or conical

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Speaker 3: array into it like a pit.

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Speaker 1: Yes, very good question, And the science behind cotton candy

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Speaker 1: turned out to be surprisingly fascinating, at least to me.

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Speaker 1: It sent me on a number of unexpected tangents. So

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Speaker 1: I hope you'll enjoy coming along with me. So I

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Speaker 1: want to shout out one of the best sources I

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Speaker 1: found on this, which was a series of chapters in

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Speaker 1: a book called Candy Bites, The Science of Sweets. This

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Speaker 1: was by authors Richard W. Hardle and Anikate Hardle. Richard

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Speaker 1: Hardle is a professor of food science at the University

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Speaker 1: of Wisconsin. Now, to really understand what's going on here,

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Speaker 1: before we get into the direct how and why of

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Speaker 1: cotton candy, we should do a brief explainer on the

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Speaker 1: science of heating sugar syrup, which is a mixture of

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Speaker 1: sugar and water. The precise heating of sugar syrup is

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Speaker 1: actually a big part of the candy making process, and

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Speaker 1: the authors of this book talk about a fact that

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Speaker 1: I thought was quite wild. They discuss how before candy

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Speaker 1: thermometers were in common, use candy thermometer. If you've never

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Speaker 1: seen it before, you know, it's just a type of

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Speaker 1: thermometer with a certain temperature range. You pin it to

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Speaker 1: the side of a pot or whatever vessel you're heating

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Speaker 1: your sugar syrup in, and it has sort of markers

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Speaker 1: on it that will let you know different stages of

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Speaker 1: the sugar syrup heating process. And I'll explain more about

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Speaker 1: that in a minute. But apparently, in the old school days,

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Speaker 1: the old days, a lot of candy makers would test

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Speaker 1: the temperature of their boiling syrup by feel literally with

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Speaker 1: their fingers. Please do not try this yourself. This could

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Speaker 1: lead to horrible, horrible burns. Like the only thing worse

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Speaker 1: than touching a boiling hot liquid is touching a hot

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Speaker 1: liquid that sticks to your skin. Oh apparently, and please

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Speaker 1: don't get any ideas. I'm just gonna describe the trick here.

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Speaker 1: But you don't know how to do it. Okay, you

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Speaker 1: don't know how to do it right, so don't try

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Speaker 1: this at home. Apparently the trick was the old candy

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Speaker 1: maker would dip their fingers into cold water first and

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Speaker 1: then quickly dip them in the hot sugar syrup and

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Speaker 1: then back into the cold water again. Please do not

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Speaker 1: try this. Apparently there's kind of an art to doing

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Speaker 1: it right, and even experienced candy makers would end up

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Speaker 1: with serious injuries and scars. But the idea is that

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Speaker 1: the feel of the boiling syrup, along with the visual appearance,

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Speaker 1: would help them know what temperature the syrup had reached.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, this detail. I'd never run across this before, but

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Speaker 3: this matches up with other things I was reading about

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Speaker 3: in terms of confectionery traditions and different cultures. And you

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Speaker 3: can just look around you and certainly in any major

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Speaker 3: city and you can see examples of this. Like, to

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Speaker 3: be a candy maker is to engage in a specialized profession.

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Speaker 3: Like it not everyone can do it. Yeah, it's serious business,

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Speaker 3: and you know, you have to be mentored into it.

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Speaker 3: You have to learn the tricks and the art of

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Speaker 3: the trade.

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Speaker 1: Now, the question is why would it be so important

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Speaker 1: to know exactly what temperature you're boiling sugar syrup had reached.

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Speaker 1: You know, why would you actually risk third degree burns

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Speaker 1: just to know what temperature exactly the syrup was well,

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Speaker 1: it's because the chemical and physical properties of sugar syrup

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Speaker 1: change greatly depending on exactly how hot it has gotten.

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Speaker 1: So the author mention these benchmarks. I don't know if

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Speaker 1: this is the exact terminology you'll see on most candy

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Speaker 1: making thermometers, but they mentioned the following stages. Okay, there

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Speaker 1: is the thread state and these I'm not going to

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Speaker 1: give the temperatures for everything, but it starts with the

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Speaker 1: thread state at two hundred and thirty degrees fahrenheit or

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Speaker 1: one hundred and ten celsius. And the final state I'm

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Speaker 1: going to mention, is it about three hundred and five

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Speaker 1: degrees fahrenheit or one hundred and fifty two celsius. The

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Speaker 1: states are thread state, then you get soft ball state,

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Speaker 1: firm ball state, then hardball, soft crack, and hard crack.

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Speaker 1: Aren't these enticing to your mind? Don't you want to

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Speaker 1: know what all of these mean?

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Speaker 3: Yeah, there's a lot of baseball terminology.

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Speaker 1: It sounds like it has nothing to do with basement,

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Speaker 1: nothing at all. Oh, it does sound like all of

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Speaker 1: them could be like a hard crack is like the

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Speaker 1: site of the bad hitting. No, no, nothing to do

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Speaker 1: with baseball. It'll all make sense.

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Speaker 3: In the end, the thread state is when you just

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Speaker 3: lasen up your boots and there it is. It all works.

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Speaker 1: That's right, should have the trash talking state. So the

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Speaker 1: interesting thing about sugar syrup, this makes it very different

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Speaker 1: from plain water, is that as you continue to boil

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Speaker 1: it over time, its boiling point goes up. Now, how

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Speaker 1: is that possible? After all, we all know that when

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Speaker 1: you boil a pot of water, it has a maximum

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Speaker 1: temperature at one atmosphere of pressure. The hottest your boiling

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Speaker 1: water can get is two twelve fahrenheit or one hundred

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Speaker 1: degrees celsius. You keep applying heat to the pot and

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Speaker 1: it will never get any hotter as long as it

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Speaker 1: can boil off. I mean, if you use a pressure

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Speaker 1: cooker and you pressurize it, you prevent the steam from escaping,

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Speaker 1: you can get it hotter. But if it is at

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Speaker 1: regular pressure the steam can escape. It will just keep

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Speaker 1: boiling at the boiling point, never get any hotter until

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Speaker 1: all the water has evaporated. However, when you add a

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Speaker 1: significant amount of sugar to the water, you actually increase

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Speaker 1: the boiling point of the solution. The sugar molecules dissolve

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Speaker 1: in the solution make the water molecules more resistant to evaporation.

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Speaker 1: When you've got sugar in the water, it's harder for

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Speaker 1: those water molecules at the surface of the pot of

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Speaker 1: water to make the phase transition into steam and boil off.

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Speaker 1: So it takes more energy to boil the solution, which

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Speaker 1: means the boiling point goes up. Mix in sugar, it's

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Speaker 1: got a higher boiling point. But here's the interesting thing.

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Speaker 1: The amount of energy it takes to evaporate water from

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Speaker 1: the solution is proportional to the sugar content. So the

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Speaker 1: more sugar is in the solution relative to the amount

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Speaker 1: of water, the higher the boiling point. So as you

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Speaker 1: heat the sugar syrup to its boiling point, water evaporates,

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Speaker 1: it does boil off, and this increases the ratio of

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Speaker 1: sugar to water in the syrup and thus increases the

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Speaker 1: boiling point even further. And it will do this until

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Speaker 1: eventually all of the water is evaporated or almost all

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Speaker 1: of the water is gone, and at some point the

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Speaker 1: sugar will just burn beyond increasing the boiling point. Another

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Speaker 1: consequence of increasing the sugar to water ratio of the

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Speaker 1: syrup through heating is that the viscosity of the syrup increases.

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Speaker 1: In other words, it becomes thicker. And this increase in

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Speaker 1: viscosity is what candy makers are talking about with phrases

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Speaker 1: like soft ball, hard ball, soft crack, and so forth.

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Speaker 1: So these terms mostly describes something about what a drop

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Speaker 1: of the syrup at each temperature and viscosity state does

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Speaker 1: when you scoop it out, you PLoP it into a

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Speaker 1: bowl of cold water. So, for example, at the soft

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Speaker 1: ball state, you drop a bit of the syrup into

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Speaker 1: cold water, and first it forms little threads, and you

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Speaker 1: can gather these up and mold them into a soft

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Speaker 1: mass with your fingers. But the syrup at the soft

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Speaker 1: ball stage is not thick enough to hold its shape

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Speaker 1: and it will slowly collapse and flow under the force

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Speaker 1: of gravity alone. So imagine the texture of like the

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Speaker 1: soft caramel filling in a chocolate truffle. And so from

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Speaker 1: here we go up the chain. You go to the

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Speaker 1: firm ball state. This means you can make it into

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Speaker 1: a ball. You can form it into a ball with

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Speaker 1: your hands, but it will be easily deformed and molded

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Speaker 1: with the fingers. It'll basically hold its shape against gravity.

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Speaker 1: At the hard ball stage, the cooled syrup will firmly

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Speaker 1: retain its shape. The authors use saltwater taffy as an

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Speaker 1: example of this texture. And after the ball stages, you've

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Speaker 1: got the crack stages, soft crack and hard crack. And

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Speaker 1: the authors describe this this point as follows quote. Sugar

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Speaker 1: syrup cooked to three hundred degrees fahrenheit and cooled quickly

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Speaker 1: in cold water forms hard brittle threads that crack when

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Speaker 1: you snap them. Thus the hard cracked state. In fact,

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Speaker 1: sugar cooked to this temperature and cooled quickly to room

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Speaker 1: temperature turns into a sugar glass and amorphous matrix of

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Speaker 1: sugar molecules that has solid like characteristics. Hard candy and

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Speaker 1: brittles are cooked to three hundred degrees fahrenheit to form

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Speaker 1: sugar glasses. So really, when you come back to the

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Speaker 1: idea of monitoring the temperatures the syrup boils, the temperature

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Speaker 1: monitoring is an indirect way for the candy maker to

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Speaker 1: measure the remaining water content of the syrup, since the

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Speaker 1: boiling point goes up as the water content goes down. Now,

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Speaker 1: regarding this concept of sugar glass from the quote I read,

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Speaker 1: there's actually another chapter in the book on this idea,

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Speaker 1: which is both interesting on its own and relevant to

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Speaker 1: the subject of cotton candy, because, as counterintuitive as this sounds,

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Speaker 1: cotton candy, this fluffy melt in your mouth mass is

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Speaker 1: a type of sugar glass, in fact, is the authors

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Speaker 1: describe it. They say, really, cotton candy should be thought

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Speaker 1: of as a type of fiberglass. It's a fiberglass that

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Speaker 1: you can.

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Speaker 3: Eat that well, that feels entirely accurate and as appetizing as.

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Speaker 1: It should be. This actually leads to something that I

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Speaker 1: didn't know about old special effects in the movies. Did

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Speaker 1: you know that sugar plays a role in the history

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Speaker 1: of breakaway glass on movie sets.

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Speaker 3: I have always heard this, but I've never closely examined it,

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Speaker 3: you know, but I'd always heard, you know, accounts of like, oh,

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Speaker 3: he's going through sugar glass there, or accounts like, well,

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Speaker 3: it was supposed to be sugar glass, but they ended

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Speaker 3: up using real glass and somebody got injured, that sort

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Speaker 3: of thing.

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Speaker 1: Oh, okay, So you knew that I didn't know this before,

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Speaker 1: or one of those many things. Maybe that if I knew,

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Speaker 1: I forgot.

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Speaker 3: I didn't know enough about it to ever like cite it,

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Speaker 3: because it's one of those things that in the back

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Speaker 3: of my mind and I have to think, well, maybe

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Speaker 3: I heard that wrong, Maybe they didn't use sugar.

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Speaker 1: No, no, you didn't hear it wrong. It's not often

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Speaker 1: the case today, but i'll explain. So. When you see

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Speaker 1: a movie stunt where somebody gets thrown through a plate

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Speaker 1: glass window, or you know, generally glass breaks on a person,

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Speaker 1: that is almost always a special prop called break away glass.

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Speaker 1: It looks like regular glass when it's solid, looks like

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Speaker 1: regular glass made out of silica, but it is not.

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Speaker 1: It's some kind of clear, brittle material that shatters on impact,

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Speaker 1: but it doesn't form the hard, sharp edges that would

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Speaker 1: cut you like regular window glass does. These days, it's

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00:20:18,840 --> 00:20:21,159
Speaker 1: often made out of some kind of plastic resin, but

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Speaker 1: in older movies it was usually made out of sugar.

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Speaker 1: And by the way, sugar glass is not just a

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Speaker 1: term used in like the breakaway glass thing. I mean

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Speaker 1: a lot of the candies people eat are essentially a

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Speaker 1: form of sugar glass modified sugar glass, like lollipops, jolly ranchers,

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Speaker 1: life savers, et cetera. You can kind of see the

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Speaker 1: glassiness when you think of the texture of these things.

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Speaker 3: Well, now I just I really want to look up

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Speaker 3: some examples from from old movies where someone is like

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Speaker 3: one hundred percent going through a window pane made out

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Speaker 3: of sugar glass.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, like you shatter through it and then you get

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Speaker 1: updust yourself off, pick up the pieces and eat them.

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Speaker 3: Possibly children and animals form in to consume the precious

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Speaker 3: sugar glass.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. I think they use sugar glass to make the

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Speaker 1: methamphetamine on the Breaking Bad set.

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Speaker 3: That's right, I do remember reading that.

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Speaker 1: But to come back to the chemistry of it, so,

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Speaker 1: as we mentioned already, you make sugar glass by boiling

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Speaker 1: syrup to the hard crack stage just means taking it

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Speaker 1: past three hundred degrees fahrenheit. At this point, the remaining

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Speaker 1: mixture is only about two percent water. And the authors

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Speaker 1: talk about how sugar actually comes in two primary physical

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Speaker 1: arrangements solid sugar. Of course, you have melted forms of sugar,

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Speaker 1: but solid sugar is either going to be crystalline sugar

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Speaker 1: like rock candy or sugar glass, and that would include

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Speaker 1: both jolly ranchers and breakaway glass on movie sets and

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Speaker 1: cotton candy. Glasses are interesting from a physics and chemistry

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Speaker 1: perspective because they combine properties of a solid and a liquid.

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Speaker 1: So they seem solid enough when you look at them

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Speaker 1: and touch them, but they actually behave in some ways

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Speaker 1: like a liquid. So crystalline solids have these regular patterns

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Speaker 1: into which the molecules are arranged. If you look at

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Speaker 1: them with a you know, at the molecular level, you

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00:22:22,800 --> 00:22:25,600
Speaker 1: will see these like long repeating chains. It's a very

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Speaker 1: structurally uniform. Glasses, which are called amorphous solids, do not

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Speaker 1: show these regular patterns, at least not on the large scale.

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Speaker 1: They might have small patterns in little local areas of molecules,

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00:22:38,560 --> 00:22:42,080
Speaker 1: but they're largely more jumbled up. The molecules are all

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00:22:42,160 --> 00:22:45,199
Speaker 1: kind of just mixed together and kind of frozen in

401
00:22:45,240 --> 00:22:49,840
Speaker 1: a chaotic mass. So an interesting consequence of the different

402
00:22:49,920 --> 00:22:54,639
Speaker 1: molecular arrangement of glass is that while it might be

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Speaker 1: perfectly solid on a normal human timeline, glasses do tend

404
00:22:59,720 --> 00:23:02,800
Speaker 1: to flow in a way that crystalline solids do not.

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00:23:03,600 --> 00:23:08,439
Speaker 1: And here in the book the author's given illustration of

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00:23:08,440 --> 00:23:10,639
Speaker 1: this by making reference to something we've talked about on

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Speaker 1: the show before, the University of Queensland pitch drop experiment.

408
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Speaker 1: I was trying to remember when this came up. I

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00:23:17,560 --> 00:23:20,320
Speaker 1: know it won an Igno Bell Prize, so may have

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00:23:20,359 --> 00:23:22,520
Speaker 1: been in that context, or it may have been some

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00:23:22,600 --> 00:23:25,200
Speaker 1: other time. We were discussing rheology, which is the scientific

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00:23:25,280 --> 00:23:28,679
Speaker 1: study of how matter flows. The short version is this

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00:23:28,800 --> 00:23:31,440
Speaker 1: experiment which began in the nineteen twenties and I think

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00:23:31,600 --> 00:23:34,720
Speaker 1: is still ongoing, or at least was ongoing until recently.

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00:23:34,760 --> 00:23:37,280
Speaker 1: I think it might still be going on. It consists

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00:23:37,400 --> 00:23:40,679
Speaker 1: of leaving a mass of tar pitch which is so

417
00:23:40,840 --> 00:23:44,040
Speaker 1: thick it really seems like a solid, sitting that down

418
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Speaker 1: in a funnel, and then subjecting it to atmospheric conditions,

419
00:23:48,280 --> 00:23:50,959
Speaker 1: and measuring how long it takes for part of it

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Speaker 1: to drip out the bottom of the funnel. I think

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00:23:53,880 --> 00:23:56,800
Speaker 1: the finding was that each drop took roughly eight to

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Speaker 1: ten years. Oh wow, So this, you know, chunk of

423
00:24:00,880 --> 00:24:04,959
Speaker 1: tar looks totally solid to us, But in regular atmospheric

424
00:24:05,000 --> 00:24:09,760
Speaker 1: conditions it is flowing. It's just flowing very slowly. And

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Speaker 1: other glasses are like that, except flowing even more slowly.

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Speaker 1: And here at the author's site a now debunked belief.

427
00:24:18,520 --> 00:24:20,320
Speaker 1: So what I'm about to say is a myth. Do

428
00:24:20,400 --> 00:24:23,040
Speaker 1: not take this away as genuine knowledge, but a now

429
00:24:23,119 --> 00:24:28,040
Speaker 1: debunked belief about stained glass windows in some medieval cathedrals.

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Speaker 1: This was based on the observation or the observation people

431
00:24:32,080 --> 00:24:34,119
Speaker 1: thought they had made that some of these window panes

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Speaker 1: appear to be thicker at the base than they are

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Speaker 1: at the top. And to whatever extent that is true,

434
00:24:40,080 --> 00:24:45,080
Speaker 1: the popular explanation is they're melting. These windows were made

435
00:24:45,200 --> 00:24:48,479
Speaker 1: hundreds of years ago, and you know installed, I don't know.

436
00:24:48,800 --> 00:24:51,960
Speaker 1: So you imagine a cathedrals built in the twelve hundreds,

437
00:24:52,160 --> 00:24:55,120
Speaker 1: and these windows are put in and it's just been

438
00:24:55,200 --> 00:24:58,320
Speaker 1: over hundreds of years. They're gradually flowing down due to

439
00:24:58,359 --> 00:25:01,000
Speaker 1: the force of gravity, and so the bases of them

440
00:25:01,040 --> 00:25:03,560
Speaker 1: are getting thicker than the top. And now the authors

441
00:25:03,720 --> 00:25:06,680
Speaker 1: note that this claim is disputed by experts. I went

442
00:25:06,720 --> 00:25:09,320
Speaker 1: and looked this up, and it seems to me it's

443
00:25:09,440 --> 00:25:11,760
Speaker 1: not just disputed. It from what I can tell, it

444
00:25:11,800 --> 00:25:15,840
Speaker 1: is thoroughly disproven. For example, I found the following paper.

445
00:25:16,280 --> 00:25:20,280
Speaker 1: This is called Viscous Flow of Medieval Cathedral Glass, and

446
00:25:20,320 --> 00:25:25,600
Speaker 1: this is by Osgar Gulbeton, John C. Morrow Zaujug, and

447
00:25:25,960 --> 00:25:30,600
Speaker 1: olus In Boratav published in the American Journal of the

448
00:25:30,600 --> 00:25:35,320
Speaker 1: American Ceramic Society twenty eighteen. Their abstract begins by describing

449
00:25:35,359 --> 00:25:38,119
Speaker 1: the urban legend about the flowing windows, and then notes

450
00:25:38,160 --> 00:25:42,720
Speaker 1: that quote advances in glass transition theory and experimental characterization

451
00:25:42,800 --> 00:25:46,880
Speaker 1: techniques unquote will allow this idea to be tested more

452
00:25:46,920 --> 00:25:49,840
Speaker 1: directly than it ever has before. And then from here

453
00:25:49,880 --> 00:25:52,320
Speaker 1: I'm going to read from the abstract with some abridgments

454
00:25:52,320 --> 00:25:57,119
Speaker 1: for simplicity. Quote. In this work, we investigate the dynamics

455
00:25:57,119 --> 00:26:01,359
Speaker 1: of a typical medieval glass composition used in Sminster Abbey,

456
00:26:01,400 --> 00:26:04,680
Speaker 1: depending on the thermal history of the glass. The room

457
00:26:04,760 --> 00:26:09,360
Speaker 1: temperature viscosity is about sixteen orders of magnitude lower than

458
00:26:09,440 --> 00:26:12,919
Speaker 1: found in a previous study of soda lime silicate glass,

459
00:26:12,920 --> 00:26:15,639
Speaker 1: which is a common type of glass used in making windows.

460
00:26:16,200 --> 00:26:20,360
Speaker 1: But the authors go on later quote despite this significantly

461
00:26:20,400 --> 00:26:23,879
Speaker 1: lower value of the room temperature viscosity, the viscosity of

462
00:26:23,920 --> 00:26:28,280
Speaker 1: the glass is much too high to observe measurable viscous

463
00:26:28,320 --> 00:26:33,080
Speaker 1: flow on a human timescale. Using analytical expressions to describe

464
00:26:33,119 --> 00:26:36,600
Speaker 1: the glass flow over a wall, we calculate a maximum

465
00:26:36,640 --> 00:26:42,119
Speaker 1: flow of about one nanometer over a billion years. So

466
00:26:43,000 --> 00:26:46,560
Speaker 1: just for context, a nanometer is one one billionth of

467
00:26:46,680 --> 00:26:50,080
Speaker 1: a meter, or like you know, two percent as wide

468
00:26:50,200 --> 00:26:53,720
Speaker 1: as some viruses. A sheet of paper is roughly one

469
00:26:53,800 --> 00:26:58,800
Speaker 1: hundred thousand nanometers thick, so if they are flowing like that,

470
00:26:59,000 --> 00:27:00,920
Speaker 1: it would not be enough for us to measure that.

471
00:27:00,960 --> 00:27:04,240
Speaker 1: This would not explain any measurable thickness difference at the

472
00:27:04,280 --> 00:27:05,560
Speaker 1: bottom of the glass.

473
00:27:05,560 --> 00:27:10,000
Speaker 3: Right, you'd need some sort of like crazy time machine slash.

474
00:27:10,400 --> 00:27:14,320
Speaker 3: I don't know alien preservation of a cathedral to be

475
00:27:14,400 --> 00:27:18,160
Speaker 3: in play. It's just impossible to imagine a scenario where

476
00:27:18,200 --> 00:27:20,080
Speaker 3: this would be observable to the naked eye.

477
00:27:20,240 --> 00:27:22,439
Speaker 1: The glass does flow, I mean those windows will be

478
00:27:22,520 --> 00:27:27,040
Speaker 1: melting by the heat death of the universe. They're just

479
00:27:27,080 --> 00:27:29,639
Speaker 1: not going to be flowing in a few hundred years.

480
00:27:30,680 --> 00:27:35,080
Speaker 1: But anyway, this observation relates to a very interesting scientific

481
00:27:35,119 --> 00:27:39,280
Speaker 1: measure that the authors of this book mention. The hurdles

482
00:27:39,320 --> 00:27:43,320
Speaker 1: mention what is called the Deborah number. This is a

483
00:27:43,440 --> 00:27:46,280
Speaker 1: number used in rheology and realogy is the study of

484
00:27:46,280 --> 00:27:51,879
Speaker 1: how matter flows to describe the ratio of two figures.

485
00:27:52,359 --> 00:27:56,240
Speaker 1: One is how quickly a fluid mass flows, or how

486
00:27:56,359 --> 00:28:00,560
Speaker 1: quickly it deforms under pressure, versus how long you are

487
00:28:00,640 --> 00:28:04,640
Speaker 1: able to observe it. And a cool fact is that

488
00:28:04,760 --> 00:28:08,720
Speaker 1: the Deborah number gets its name from a passage in

489
00:28:08,800 --> 00:28:12,240
Speaker 1: the Hebrew Bible. It's in the Book of Judges chapter five,

490
00:28:12,760 --> 00:28:16,040
Speaker 1: which is telling of a song by the prophet Deborah

491
00:28:16,600 --> 00:28:21,320
Speaker 1: in which she's prophesying a great destruction to come, and

492
00:28:21,359 --> 00:28:24,320
Speaker 1: she says, this is the King James version. Lord, when

493
00:28:24,359 --> 00:28:27,399
Speaker 1: thou wentest out of sear, when thou marchest out of

494
00:28:27,440 --> 00:28:31,080
Speaker 1: the field of edom, the earth trembled, and the heavens dropped.

495
00:28:31,280 --> 00:28:35,560
Speaker 1: The clouds also dropped water. The mountains melted from before

496
00:28:35,600 --> 00:28:39,320
Speaker 1: the Lord. And sometimes that line about the mountains melting

497
00:28:39,440 --> 00:28:42,600
Speaker 1: before the Lord is expressed as the mountains flowed before

498
00:28:42,640 --> 00:28:46,840
Speaker 1: the Lord. Some theologians I think this is a later interpretation.

499
00:28:47,400 --> 00:28:50,960
Speaker 1: Some theologians explain this by saying that it's not just

500
00:28:51,040 --> 00:28:54,680
Speaker 1: a simple expression of power i e. God can melt mountains,

501
00:28:55,040 --> 00:28:59,080
Speaker 1: but an expression of God's dominion over time, meaning like

502
00:28:59,160 --> 00:29:01,920
Speaker 1: he lives and sees forever, he is eternal, so to him,

503
00:29:02,320 --> 00:29:06,200
Speaker 1: mountains which are completely solid throughout the lifetime of a human,

504
00:29:06,320 --> 00:29:08,840
Speaker 1: you know, not a noticeable change in a few decades

505
00:29:09,360 --> 00:29:12,160
Speaker 1: to God's point of view, and seeing outside of time,

506
00:29:12,200 --> 00:29:15,160
Speaker 1: they just flow like soft caramel, which would be somewhat

507
00:29:15,200 --> 00:29:18,720
Speaker 1: scientifically accurate. I am not convinced that's what the author

508
00:29:18,760 --> 00:29:21,080
Speaker 1: of this passage actually had in mind. It sounds to

509
00:29:21,120 --> 00:29:23,800
Speaker 1: me more like a classical expression of power and MND

510
00:29:23,840 --> 00:29:25,800
Speaker 1: But interesting nonetheless.

511
00:29:25,440 --> 00:29:29,120
Speaker 3: Oh absolutely, I love it when there's an interpretation of

512
00:29:30,720 --> 00:29:33,800
Speaker 3: ancient writings like this that are not actually pushing some

513
00:29:33,800 --> 00:29:36,760
Speaker 3: sort of an ancient alien technology agenda, but are like,

514
00:29:36,880 --> 00:29:41,360
Speaker 3: you know, it's kind of nice that science matches up

515
00:29:41,400 --> 00:29:43,880
Speaker 3: here in a way that again is not pushing an

516
00:29:43,920 --> 00:29:45,040
Speaker 3: agenda in either direction.

517
00:29:46,360 --> 00:29:49,360
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, I'm not trying to slam the passage in anyway.

518
00:29:49,400 --> 00:29:50,840
Speaker 1: I mean, this is a great passage of the Bible.

519
00:29:51,240 --> 00:29:54,880
Speaker 1: That interpretation might be implying a kind of scientific insight

520
00:29:54,920 --> 00:29:57,040
Speaker 1: that the authors of the passage probably did not have,

521
00:29:57,200 --> 00:30:01,480
Speaker 1: But at the very least, it is very interesting coincidence.

522
00:30:01,520 --> 00:30:04,040
Speaker 1: And you know, if the author actually did have that insight,

523
00:30:04,080 --> 00:30:08,240
Speaker 1: that's quite interesting too. But to come back to sugar glass,

524
00:30:08,600 --> 00:30:12,360
Speaker 1: of course, sugar glass is much keener on flowing than

525
00:30:12,840 --> 00:30:15,400
Speaker 1: the soda lime silicon glass that you would be used

526
00:30:15,400 --> 00:30:18,520
Speaker 1: in a stained glass window in a cathedral. Sugar glass

527
00:30:18,520 --> 00:30:22,400
Speaker 1: will flow more easily, and this leads to apparently funny

528
00:30:22,480 --> 00:30:27,600
Speaker 1: considerations in older movie making. So the authors talk about

529
00:30:27,880 --> 00:30:30,920
Speaker 1: how if a prop window of sugar glass was made

530
00:30:30,960 --> 00:30:33,440
Speaker 1: in the morning on an old movie set, the production

531
00:30:33,480 --> 00:30:35,840
Speaker 1: would kind of need to hurry along and shoot the

532
00:30:35,880 --> 00:30:40,680
Speaker 1: window smashing scene soon because the window wouldn't last forever.

533
00:30:41,120 --> 00:30:43,760
Speaker 1: As you might guess if you've ever left Jolly Ranchers

534
00:30:43,760 --> 00:30:46,520
Speaker 1: out in a hot car under the stress of heat

535
00:30:46,720 --> 00:30:51,360
Speaker 1: and moisture conditions in the air, the sugar glass window

536
00:30:51,440 --> 00:30:55,239
Speaker 1: would gradually soften and then eventually begin to melt and

537
00:30:55,400 --> 00:30:58,520
Speaker 1: flow like the mountains before the Lord. Oh wow.

538
00:30:58,640 --> 00:31:02,600
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean we've all heard or read examples of

539
00:31:02,640 --> 00:31:06,080
Speaker 3: really hot movie shoots, you know, be it a set

540
00:31:06,200 --> 00:31:10,560
Speaker 3: or some sort of a location. Throw melting sugar glass

541
00:31:10,560 --> 00:31:12,920
Speaker 3: into that scenario. Yeah.

542
00:31:12,960 --> 00:31:16,560
Speaker 1: Now here's where we finally get back directly to cotton candy.

543
00:31:17,680 --> 00:31:21,040
Speaker 1: The Heartles claim that cotton candy is probably descended from

544
00:31:21,040 --> 00:31:27,000
Speaker 1: a previously existing confectionery product called spun sugar. Now, spun

545
00:31:27,080 --> 00:31:30,400
Speaker 1: sugar is made by heating sugar syrup to the hard

546
00:31:30,480 --> 00:31:33,200
Speaker 1: crack phase. Remember that's the highest phase. Again. That's how

547
00:31:33,240 --> 00:31:35,040
Speaker 1: you make sugar glass. You take it up to pass

548
00:31:35,080 --> 00:31:38,560
Speaker 1: three hundred degrees fahrenheit, and then you pour that syrup

549
00:31:38,640 --> 00:31:42,120
Speaker 1: over something like a fork or a wisk, which allows

550
00:31:42,160 --> 00:31:45,479
Speaker 1: it to drip and stretch out and form these long,

551
00:31:45,800 --> 00:31:50,040
Speaker 1: thin strands as it cools and hardens. So sometimes people

552
00:31:50,400 --> 00:31:53,000
Speaker 1: I've seen this on like cooking shows before, people will

553
00:31:53,000 --> 00:31:57,440
Speaker 1: make shapes out of spun sugar. You know, They'll like

554
00:31:57,840 --> 00:31:59,960
Speaker 1: pour the threads over the back of a bowl or

555
00:32:00,160 --> 00:32:01,880
Speaker 1: something like that and then peel it off, and then

556
00:32:01,920 --> 00:32:07,080
Speaker 1: you will have this interesting wiry dome of the sugar threads.

557
00:32:07,120 --> 00:32:09,760
Speaker 1: To me, sponge sugar has always kind of looked like

558
00:32:09,800 --> 00:32:12,480
Speaker 1: a thin wire. It's kind of shiny, so it has

559
00:32:12,520 --> 00:32:14,720
Speaker 1: that metallic look to it. Yeah.

560
00:32:14,800 --> 00:32:18,200
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I have encountered this on some desserts as

561
00:32:18,200 --> 00:32:21,480
Speaker 3: a grown up, and yeah, I mean it's it's probably

562
00:32:21,560 --> 00:32:26,200
Speaker 3: the best place to utilize this sugar technology for the

563
00:32:26,240 --> 00:32:29,400
Speaker 3: adult palette, right because it's it's not acting on its own.

564
00:32:29,440 --> 00:32:31,440
Speaker 3: It's just kind of like a little novelty on top

565
00:32:31,480 --> 00:32:33,320
Speaker 3: of something that maybe has a more complex flavor.

566
00:32:33,720 --> 00:32:35,840
Speaker 1: I'm not knocking it, but I think the appeal of

567
00:32:35,840 --> 00:32:40,320
Speaker 1: sponge sugar is more for for looking at than eating.

568
00:32:40,360 --> 00:32:42,120
Speaker 1: I don't know how much fun it really is to

569
00:32:42,160 --> 00:32:45,720
Speaker 1: eat these little wires of sugar syrup.

570
00:32:45,560 --> 00:32:47,080
Speaker 3: But it's nice to know that you can.

571
00:32:47,560 --> 00:32:52,440
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. So here the authors talk a bit about

572
00:32:52,480 --> 00:32:55,000
Speaker 1: the history of how cotton candy was invented, like where

573
00:32:55,000 --> 00:32:57,080
Speaker 1: the first machines came from. I think we'll get more

574
00:32:57,080 --> 00:33:00,560
Speaker 1: into that later in maybe in later today or in

575
00:33:00,600 --> 00:33:02,920
Speaker 1: part two of the series, but to begin with, just

576
00:33:03,000 --> 00:33:06,640
Speaker 1: like what is it? Physically? What is it? Cotton candy

577
00:33:07,120 --> 00:33:09,800
Speaker 1: is sort of like spun sugar, but taken to an

578
00:33:09,840 --> 00:33:15,320
Speaker 1: almost spiritual extreme of wispiness. It's usually made with a

579
00:33:15,400 --> 00:33:20,320
Speaker 1: special machine which includes a rapidly rotating disc or tray

580
00:33:20,440 --> 00:33:22,920
Speaker 1: called a spinner, and then in the middle of that

581
00:33:23,000 --> 00:33:26,080
Speaker 1: tray there's a heating element. So you pour the flavored

582
00:33:26,080 --> 00:33:29,440
Speaker 1: sugar into the middle of the spinner with the heating element.

583
00:33:29,720 --> 00:33:33,040
Speaker 1: It gets melted by the heating element, and then this

584
00:33:33,400 --> 00:33:36,560
Speaker 1: in the liquid form. As the thing spins, it leaks

585
00:33:36,600 --> 00:33:39,480
Speaker 1: out of tiny holes in the outside wall of its

586
00:33:39,520 --> 00:33:45,040
Speaker 1: containers spinning container, and these tiny streams of melted sugar

587
00:33:45,440 --> 00:33:49,680
Speaker 1: make contact with the cold, unheated air outside the spinner,

588
00:33:50,040 --> 00:33:55,400
Speaker 1: then quickly solidify into sugar glass, but microscopic hair like

589
00:33:55,520 --> 00:33:59,120
Speaker 1: strands of sugar glass. Then the operator collects all of

590
00:33:59,200 --> 00:34:02,600
Speaker 1: these fibers from a larger kind of container or tray,

591
00:34:04,280 --> 00:34:07,520
Speaker 1: collects them into a cone or onto a stick, and

592
00:34:07,640 --> 00:34:10,600
Speaker 1: here's your cotton candy. Now here's where we come back

593
00:34:10,600 --> 00:34:14,200
Speaker 1: to the comparison to fiberglass. The haartles in the book

594
00:34:14,320 --> 00:34:18,960
Speaker 1: right quote. Fiberglass, first commercialized by the Owen Corning Fiberglass

595
00:34:18,960 --> 00:34:22,920
Speaker 1: Corporation in nineteen thirty eight, is made by extruding molten

596
00:34:23,120 --> 00:34:26,680
Speaker 1: silica glass through small holes to make thin strands or

597
00:34:26,680 --> 00:34:30,680
Speaker 1: fibers of glass. As the strands exit the extruder, they

598
00:34:30,719 --> 00:34:34,480
Speaker 1: cool into the solid glassy state and are collected for

599
00:34:34,640 --> 00:34:38,520
Speaker 1: further processing. The process is essentially the same as for

600
00:34:38,560 --> 00:34:43,719
Speaker 1: making cotton candy, which is just great. Now, of course,

601
00:34:43,760 --> 00:34:46,840
Speaker 1: there are major differences due to the chemical differences between

602
00:34:46,880 --> 00:34:51,480
Speaker 1: silica based glass and sugar glass. Regular fiberglass made out

603
00:34:51,480 --> 00:34:56,040
Speaker 1: of glass glass. Silica glass is used as an insulation

604
00:34:56,200 --> 00:35:00,480
Speaker 1: material in construction. It's quite resistant to heat and moist

605
00:35:00,719 --> 00:35:04,239
Speaker 1: that is one of its main appeals. Cotton candy is

606
00:35:04,320 --> 00:35:08,320
Speaker 1: exactly the opposite. Contact with heat or moisture will destroy

607
00:35:08,480 --> 00:35:11,640
Speaker 1: the structure of cotton candy, So once it's made, it's

608
00:35:11,680 --> 00:35:13,600
Speaker 1: got a short shelf life, or you've got to like

609
00:35:13,719 --> 00:35:17,400
Speaker 1: seal it off against the atmosphere basically like, yeah, you

610
00:35:17,400 --> 00:35:19,840
Speaker 1: need to eat it right away or put it inside

611
00:35:19,840 --> 00:35:24,359
Speaker 1: water type packaging. And the water type packaging is not

612
00:35:24,560 --> 00:35:28,719
Speaker 1: just for protection against the like raccoon washing full dunk scenario.

613
00:35:29,280 --> 00:35:34,440
Speaker 1: Sugar is hygroscopic, meaning it will absorb water from the

614
00:35:34,719 --> 00:35:38,760
Speaker 1: air around it, so you know, usually there's some water

615
00:35:38,840 --> 00:35:41,239
Speaker 1: content in the air. I guess your cotton candy might

616
00:35:41,280 --> 00:35:43,080
Speaker 1: survive longer if you make it in the middle of

617
00:35:43,080 --> 00:35:46,480
Speaker 1: the desert, but to whatever degree it's humid outside, cotton

618
00:35:46,520 --> 00:35:49,880
Speaker 1: candy will quickly go from being fluffy and delightful to

619
00:35:50,000 --> 00:35:53,840
Speaker 1: kind of like collapsing down and becoming a sticky, semi

620
00:35:53,920 --> 00:35:56,600
Speaker 1: melted mess. And then of course if you actually like

621
00:35:56,640 --> 00:35:58,919
Speaker 1: splash water on it or it gets rained on, that's

622
00:35:59,000 --> 00:36:00,120
Speaker 1: just the end of it.

623
00:36:00,200 --> 00:36:01,759
Speaker 3: Yeah, heartbreaking.

624
00:36:02,320 --> 00:36:04,319
Speaker 1: In fact, you can look up I did before we

625
00:36:04,360 --> 00:36:07,960
Speaker 1: started here cotton candy like slow death of cotton candy

626
00:36:08,000 --> 00:36:10,640
Speaker 1: time lapse videos, and these are really good and they

627
00:36:10,760 --> 00:36:14,879
Speaker 1: always have hilarious music because you're just watching joy die.

628
00:36:15,360 --> 00:36:18,720
Speaker 1: You're watching a lump of cotton candy over the course

629
00:36:18,760 --> 00:36:21,480
Speaker 1: of you know, three or four hours just slump down

630
00:36:21,560 --> 00:36:25,160
Speaker 1: and collapse. But the music that's playing sounds like like

631
00:36:25,400 --> 00:36:28,680
Speaker 1: orbital or something. It's very like feel good, upbeat, very upbeat.

632
00:36:28,840 --> 00:36:30,719
Speaker 3: I was surprised by that. I thought it would be

633
00:36:30,760 --> 00:36:34,360
Speaker 3: more like, you know, nine is Nails Hurt or something,

634
00:36:34,400 --> 00:36:36,960
Speaker 3: you know, for the Johnny Cash cover, Yeah, the Johnny

635
00:36:37,000 --> 00:36:39,680
Speaker 3: Cash cover Slow to Cave cotton candy.

636
00:36:39,680 --> 00:36:42,400
Speaker 1: Or the Johnny Cash cover of Rusty Cage, because you know,

637
00:36:42,480 --> 00:36:44,520
Speaker 1: it's like, in a way, it's breaking out of the

638
00:36:44,560 --> 00:36:46,279
Speaker 1: form you have put it in. I'm gonna break my

639
00:36:46,360 --> 00:36:50,239
Speaker 1: Rusty Cage of being an extruded, you know, hair like

640
00:36:50,280 --> 00:36:52,959
Speaker 1: filament of glass, and I'm just going to turn into

641
00:36:52,960 --> 00:36:57,280
Speaker 1: what I've always wanted to be, a thick, sticky like puddle.

642
00:36:58,640 --> 00:37:00,600
Speaker 3: Yeah, the one that I watched at the end, after

643
00:37:00,680 --> 00:37:04,680
Speaker 3: it had shrunken down, they then chopped it up or

644
00:37:04,760 --> 00:37:07,839
Speaker 3: cut it up with scissors, and I don't know why.

645
00:37:07,840 --> 00:37:09,080
Speaker 3: It's so fascinating. Yeah.

646
00:37:09,320 --> 00:37:21,680
Speaker 1: Yeah, So that's what's going on with the chemistry of

647
00:37:21,719 --> 00:37:24,719
Speaker 1: cotton candy. Much more interesting subject than I expected it

648
00:37:24,760 --> 00:37:27,240
Speaker 1: to be. But there's also a lot of interesting stuff

649
00:37:27,239 --> 00:37:30,279
Speaker 1: about cotton candy and how it interacts with sort of

650
00:37:30,360 --> 00:37:35,160
Speaker 1: the history of confectionery and other related candies and treats

651
00:37:35,200 --> 00:37:36,320
Speaker 1: made in the past.

652
00:37:36,719 --> 00:37:40,920
Speaker 3: That's right now, obviously, I think most of us are

653
00:37:40,960 --> 00:37:43,319
Speaker 3: aware of this. Humans have always had a sweet tooth

654
00:37:44,400 --> 00:37:47,200
Speaker 3: ready to pounce upon such sweet treats that you might

655
00:37:47,239 --> 00:37:52,880
Speaker 3: find in the natural environment as carrots, berries, or perhaps

656
00:37:52,960 --> 00:37:56,040
Speaker 3: even if you're lucky and daring, a taste of wild honey.

657
00:37:56,440 --> 00:37:59,440
Speaker 1: I was wondering, is honey about as sweet as it

658
00:37:59,520 --> 00:38:02,640
Speaker 1: gets in terms of natural products, just things you would

659
00:38:02,640 --> 00:38:04,760
Speaker 1: find in nature, unprocessed or.

660
00:38:04,680 --> 00:38:09,040
Speaker 3: Unreduced pretty much? Yeah, I mean because oftentimes when you

661
00:38:09,040 --> 00:38:12,600
Speaker 3: hear examples of like the sweet tooth of our ancient ancestors,

662
00:38:12,600 --> 00:38:14,799
Speaker 3: you know, they're talking about things like carrots as being

663
00:38:14,880 --> 00:38:18,320
Speaker 3: like extremely sweet, and that's something that in our modern

664
00:38:19,120 --> 00:38:22,640
Speaker 3: sugar saturated world, like we don't even think about carrots

665
00:38:22,640 --> 00:38:24,680
Speaker 3: being sweet, but carrots are sweet. Like, take take a

666
00:38:24,680 --> 00:38:28,160
Speaker 3: little time to appreciate a candy carrot the next time

667
00:38:29,080 --> 00:38:30,480
Speaker 3: you're rooting around in the fridge.

668
00:38:30,960 --> 00:38:33,520
Speaker 1: I recall when I was a kid, there were carrots.

669
00:38:33,600 --> 00:38:36,040
Speaker 1: I think there were like baby carrots, which are not

670
00:38:36,160 --> 00:38:39,440
Speaker 1: actually baby carrots, by the way, they're just different ways

671
00:38:39,440 --> 00:38:40,280
Speaker 1: of cutting a carrot.

672
00:38:40,360 --> 00:38:43,560
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're just ugly carrots and carrot leftovers that are

673
00:38:43,600 --> 00:38:44,920
Speaker 3: trimmed down into these little nottes.

674
00:38:45,080 --> 00:38:47,239
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's the carrot principle of It's kind of like

675
00:38:47,280 --> 00:38:52,440
Speaker 1: tater tots, you know, it's reducing waste. But yeah, carrots.

676
00:38:52,880 --> 00:38:54,919
Speaker 1: I remember some baby carrots when I was a kid

677
00:38:54,960 --> 00:38:57,399
Speaker 1: that were sold under some brand name that was like

678
00:38:57,640 --> 00:39:00,440
Speaker 1: Sugar Treats or something like that. There was just carrots,

679
00:39:00,480 --> 00:39:02,120
Speaker 1: but I think it was a way of tricking kids

680
00:39:02,160 --> 00:39:05,200
Speaker 1: at the stores. Something goes, oh, that's called sugar, yum yum.

681
00:39:06,760 --> 00:39:09,000
Speaker 1: They did taste sweeter somehow. They just got to prime

682
00:39:09,040 --> 00:39:09,440
Speaker 1: your mind.

683
00:39:09,760 --> 00:39:11,399
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean that's one of the reasons kids will

684
00:39:11,440 --> 00:39:12,719
Speaker 3: actually eat them most of the time.

685
00:39:13,000 --> 00:39:15,040
Speaker 1: But we're not hating on carrots. But the carrots are great.

686
00:39:15,280 --> 00:39:16,440
Speaker 1: It's great love carrots.

687
00:39:16,560 --> 00:39:19,400
Speaker 3: But there's a lot of evidence for humanity's deep seated

688
00:39:19,440 --> 00:39:22,680
Speaker 3: sweet tooth. The spider caves and what is now Spain

689
00:39:22,800 --> 00:39:26,440
Speaker 3: feature depictions of human honey gathering. Is the believe the

690
00:39:26,480 --> 00:39:31,160
Speaker 3: oldest known depiction of bees and evidence of human conception

691
00:39:31,280 --> 00:39:36,680
Speaker 3: of honey and or the harvesting of honey. I've seen

692
00:39:36,960 --> 00:39:41,200
Speaker 3: different dates for this, including eight thousand BCE and some

693
00:39:41,280 --> 00:39:44,279
Speaker 3: more like six thousand BC, but suffice to say it's

694
00:39:44,440 --> 00:39:48,920
Speaker 3: very ancient evidence, and the practice obviously predates that the depiction.

695
00:39:49,440 --> 00:39:53,359
Speaker 3: Humans were going out and harvesting honey, stealing honey from

696
00:39:53,560 --> 00:39:56,560
Speaker 3: the insects that created now. As we've discussed in the

697
00:39:56,560 --> 00:39:59,440
Speaker 3: show before, the ancient Egyptians made various uses of honey

698
00:40:00,719 --> 00:40:04,359
Speaker 3: medicinal the magical, but they also appreciated it for its

699
00:40:04,360 --> 00:40:08,680
Speaker 3: sweetness and proper sugar based confections go back at least

700
00:40:09,120 --> 00:40:13,160
Speaker 3: to two thousand BCE in India according to Sanskrit texts,

701
00:40:13,200 --> 00:40:16,080
Speaker 3: though I've also seen the date of refined sugar in

702
00:40:16,080 --> 00:40:19,880
Speaker 3: India going back to six thousand BCE, and the English

703
00:40:19,920 --> 00:40:24,080
Speaker 3: words sugar and candy are both distantly related to their

704
00:40:24,120 --> 00:40:29,000
Speaker 3: original Sanskrit terms. As such, there is of course a

705
00:40:29,120 --> 00:40:35,959
Speaker 3: very deep rooted sweets culture in India, and I don't

706
00:40:36,000 --> 00:40:38,719
Speaker 3: have a lot of expertise in it, but I have

707
00:40:39,360 --> 00:40:43,920
Speaker 3: been to Indian sweet shops before as an adult, so

708
00:40:44,000 --> 00:40:47,080
Speaker 3: I was I've almost I've never been in the market

709
00:40:47,120 --> 00:40:49,000
Speaker 3: for the sweets they have. I'm usually buying something like

710
00:40:49,040 --> 00:40:52,680
Speaker 3: Somosa's or something. But as such, there is of course

711
00:40:52,680 --> 00:40:55,560
Speaker 3: a robust world of Indian sweets out there. It's a

712
00:40:55,640 --> 00:40:59,840
Speaker 3: very deep sweet culture, one that I sadly did not

713
00:40:59,880 --> 00:41:01,920
Speaker 3: have access to as a child. When I would have

714
00:41:01,960 --> 00:41:06,640
Speaker 3: most appreciated all of this, I only had Indian food

715
00:41:07,360 --> 00:41:10,520
Speaker 3: basically once I was at least in college, I think.

716
00:41:11,440 --> 00:41:13,960
Speaker 3: So when I go into Indian sweet shops, I'm impressed

717
00:41:14,000 --> 00:41:17,960
Speaker 3: by all the colors and shapes, but I just don't

718
00:41:17,960 --> 00:41:20,839
Speaker 3: have the appetite for it. I don't know if there

719
00:41:20,840 --> 00:41:23,520
Speaker 3: are any listeners out there who have definite recommendations about

720
00:41:23,520 --> 00:41:26,880
Speaker 3: what I should try at the local Indian sweet shops.

721
00:41:27,360 --> 00:41:28,960
Speaker 3: Let me know, and I will go out and I

722
00:41:29,000 --> 00:41:32,320
Speaker 3: will conduct the experiment. Now, when it comes to European

723
00:41:32,360 --> 00:41:36,200
Speaker 3: traditions of sweets, sugar based confections emerged during the Middle

724
00:41:36,239 --> 00:41:39,400
Speaker 3: Ages as luxury goods brought in initially via a pothecaris

725
00:41:39,440 --> 00:41:42,280
Speaker 3: in the Middle East, but in other parts of the world,

726
00:41:42,320 --> 00:41:46,960
Speaker 3: as we've been discussing places where sugarcane grew naturally, talking

727
00:41:46,960 --> 00:41:51,239
Speaker 3: about South Asia, Southeast Asia, and potentially New Guinea, or

728
00:41:51,280 --> 00:41:55,080
Speaker 3: of course lands adjacent to those lands, places where candy

729
00:41:55,120 --> 00:41:59,200
Speaker 3: culture could either emerge or easily flow into. In those cases,

730
00:41:59,239 --> 00:42:04,840
Speaker 3: we see more deeply rooted sugar cultures. Deeply rooted sweet cultures,

731
00:42:04,880 --> 00:42:08,880
Speaker 3: such as in India now fast forwarding to cotton candy.

732
00:42:09,000 --> 00:42:11,840
Speaker 3: Just to put all that in perspective, we're going to

733
00:42:11,880 --> 00:42:14,760
Speaker 3: get more into the origin story of cotton candy. But again, generally,

734
00:42:15,600 --> 00:42:19,400
Speaker 3: the generally accepted invention story for cotton candy proper is

735
00:42:19,880 --> 00:42:24,040
Speaker 3: that it is unleashed upon the world at the nineteen

736
00:42:24,080 --> 00:42:28,279
Speaker 3: oh four World's Fair, an invention by a pair of Tennesseeans,

737
00:42:28,920 --> 00:42:32,200
Speaker 3: dentist William Morrison and a confectioner by the name of

738
00:42:32,280 --> 00:42:35,200
Speaker 3: John C. Wharton, both Nashville based.

739
00:42:35,200 --> 00:42:37,760
Speaker 1: I believe dentists creating cotton candy.

740
00:42:38,040 --> 00:42:42,839
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, that is a frequently spouted fact that never

741
00:42:42,920 --> 00:42:47,359
Speaker 3: stops being hilarious, because again it is just essentially peershe There.

742
00:42:47,360 --> 00:42:50,879
Speaker 3: Of course, some other contemporary rivals for the invention honors here,

743
00:42:50,920 --> 00:42:54,200
Speaker 3: as is often the case with inventions from the nineteenth

744
00:42:54,239 --> 00:42:58,680
Speaker 3: or twentieth century, as we've discussed before in our invention episodes,

745
00:42:59,200 --> 00:43:04,000
Speaker 3: but people point to Morrison and or Alton there when

746
00:43:04,040 --> 00:43:07,399
Speaker 3: it comes to the invention of proper cotton candy. There

747
00:43:07,480 --> 00:43:11,480
Speaker 3: are also some additional arguments for nineteenth or even fifteenth

748
00:43:11,520 --> 00:43:15,760
Speaker 3: century CE European origins for cotton candy or things adjacent

749
00:43:15,760 --> 00:43:19,120
Speaker 3: to cotton candy. One of the more fascinating arguments that

750
00:43:19,160 --> 00:43:22,040
Speaker 3: I ran across was that was that cotton candy or

751
00:43:22,080 --> 00:43:25,280
Speaker 3: something similar to it dates back to China's Han dynasty,

752
00:43:25,600 --> 00:43:29,799
Speaker 3: which would place it somewhere between two two BCE and

753
00:43:29,920 --> 00:43:33,840
Speaker 3: nine CE, or between twenty five and two twenty CE,

754
00:43:34,560 --> 00:43:38,160
Speaker 3: depending on where in the Han dynasty you're falling. Okay,

755
00:43:38,560 --> 00:43:41,600
Speaker 3: so in this we're talking about long she Tongue or

756
00:43:41,800 --> 00:43:47,640
Speaker 3: dragons Beard candy, sometimes abbreviated in Western circles as d

757
00:43:48,040 --> 00:43:52,719
Speaker 3: b C. I've not personally had Dragon's Beard candy. It's

758
00:43:52,719 --> 00:43:55,560
Speaker 3: possible that I've had the chance and just didn't recognize

759
00:43:55,680 --> 00:44:00,680
Speaker 3: my opportunity or just wasn't looking for something. I think

760
00:44:00,680 --> 00:44:04,640
Speaker 3: that's ultimately the tragedy of being exposed to different sweet cultures.

761
00:44:04,640 --> 00:44:06,759
Speaker 3: As you grow older, you just have less of an

762
00:44:06,800 --> 00:44:11,600
Speaker 3: appetite for it, but it's still it's very interesting looking.

763
00:44:11,600 --> 00:44:14,680
Speaker 3: You can easily look up various YouTube videos of Dragon's

764
00:44:14,719 --> 00:44:17,960
Speaker 3: Beard candy, and I've also seen places where you can

765
00:44:18,000 --> 00:44:22,640
Speaker 3: apparently buy it online, you know, where it's like shrink

766
00:44:22,680 --> 00:44:27,479
Speaker 3: wrapped or something. The same is true of some Middle

767
00:44:27,520 --> 00:44:31,879
Speaker 3: Eastern examples that will refer to of similar treats, such

768
00:44:31,880 --> 00:44:36,200
Speaker 3: as Middle Eastern floss halva, which sometimes has the flossy

769
00:44:36,239 --> 00:44:39,040
Speaker 3: hairlike consistency that we're talking about, But I've also seen

770
00:44:39,080 --> 00:44:41,680
Speaker 3: images of it that look like they're a bit more solid,

771
00:44:42,760 --> 00:44:45,000
Speaker 3: but in that kind of reminds me of these examples

772
00:44:45,000 --> 00:44:46,719
Speaker 3: that we're just talking about of like what happens when

773
00:44:46,719 --> 00:44:49,120
Speaker 3: you take cotton candy, allow it to sit, and then

774
00:44:49,120 --> 00:44:52,960
Speaker 3: you cut it up. So maybe it's a case like

775
00:44:53,000 --> 00:44:56,840
Speaker 3: that where you have different versions of what the is

776
00:44:56,920 --> 00:45:01,560
Speaker 3: ultimately going on to the tray in the confectionary. But

777
00:45:01,680 --> 00:45:04,920
Speaker 3: flasava also looks quite good. I would definitely accept some

778
00:45:05,000 --> 00:45:07,120
Speaker 3: of this from Tilda Swinton in a sleigh if she

779
00:45:07,200 --> 00:45:11,600
Speaker 3: was offering this Turkish delight. So I was reading a

780
00:45:11,640 --> 00:45:14,480
Speaker 3: bit more about Dragon's Beard candy. I found a really

781
00:45:14,600 --> 00:45:19,000
Speaker 3: nice Eater travel article by Tiffany Lee from twenty twenty

782
00:45:19,000 --> 00:45:21,920
Speaker 3: four titled Welcome the Year of the Dragon with Dragon's

783
00:45:21,920 --> 00:45:25,719
Speaker 3: Beard Candy if you can find it by the way,

784
00:45:25,840 --> 00:45:29,239
Speaker 3: Happy Lunar New Year, as we have now entered into

785
00:45:29,280 --> 00:45:30,799
Speaker 3: the Year of the wood Snake.

786
00:45:31,040 --> 00:45:33,680
Speaker 1: Now refresh my memory. Rob woodsnake means that like you

787
00:45:34,080 --> 00:45:36,640
Speaker 1: get a year of a specific animal, like Year of

788
00:45:36,680 --> 00:45:38,359
Speaker 1: the Dragon, Year of the pig. This is a year

789
00:45:38,400 --> 00:45:42,160
Speaker 1: of the snake, but also the animal is under the

790
00:45:42,200 --> 00:45:45,239
Speaker 1: influence of a certain planet, and so that would mean

791
00:45:45,320 --> 00:45:47,239
Speaker 1: that's the wood aspect. Is that right?

792
00:45:47,360 --> 00:45:50,040
Speaker 3: Right? There are different elemental factors that come into play,

793
00:45:50,080 --> 00:45:52,880
Speaker 3: so you know it might be like iron snake, water snake,

794
00:45:52,960 --> 00:45:55,320
Speaker 3: wood snake. This year is the wood snake.

795
00:45:55,600 --> 00:45:58,960
Speaker 1: I like wood snake. It's very earthy. Yeah.

796
00:45:59,280 --> 00:46:02,440
Speaker 3: So the author here Lee, herself born to immigrant parents

797
00:46:02,440 --> 00:46:06,000
Speaker 3: from Hong Kong, describes childhood memories of buying the treat

798
00:46:06,000 --> 00:46:09,080
Speaker 3: from a food stall in Toronto, and she describes the

799
00:46:09,120 --> 00:46:12,880
Speaker 3: candy as follows. I thought this was a nice description quote.

800
00:46:13,080 --> 00:46:17,360
Speaker 3: The candies stretched sugar strands wrapped around a crunchy core

801
00:46:17,480 --> 00:46:21,960
Speaker 3: of peanuts, coconut and sesame seeds create a series of

802
00:46:22,000 --> 00:46:26,600
Speaker 3: textual sensations on the tongue. Some strands dissolve into a

803
00:46:26,640 --> 00:46:32,080
Speaker 3: soft mass, while others shatter into foyatine flakes before the

804
00:46:32,080 --> 00:46:37,359
Speaker 3: whole thing morphs into a chewy, crunchy jumble of nougat. Foyatine.

805
00:46:37,360 --> 00:46:38,759
Speaker 3: By the way, that is, I had to look this

806
00:46:38,840 --> 00:46:40,200
Speaker 3: up and it was not familiar with it as a

807
00:46:40,200 --> 00:46:45,359
Speaker 3: crunchy French confection made from thin sweetened crapes. I've never

808
00:46:45,440 --> 00:46:47,440
Speaker 3: had this one either, but you know, I get the idea.

809
00:46:48,160 --> 00:46:50,640
Speaker 1: Is the foy part of foyotine? Does that share a

810
00:46:50,680 --> 00:46:53,320
Speaker 1: root with like, oh, I don't know how to pronounce

811
00:46:53,360 --> 00:46:56,879
Speaker 1: this meal foy or whatever? The thousand layers thing?

812
00:46:57,400 --> 00:47:01,560
Speaker 3: Ooh, that sounds likely is one of those layers crunchy.

813
00:47:02,040 --> 00:47:02,960
Speaker 3: I guess it would have to be.

814
00:47:03,440 --> 00:47:05,440
Speaker 1: I think they're I think they're all crunchy, aren't they.

815
00:47:05,560 --> 00:47:07,840
Speaker 1: I think a bunch of it's like tons and tons

816
00:47:07,880 --> 00:47:10,680
Speaker 1: of crunchy layers. I think it means it means like

817
00:47:10,719 --> 00:47:14,080
Speaker 1: a thousand layers or a thousand sheets or something. Oh, okay, yes,

818
00:47:14,200 --> 00:47:17,960
Speaker 1: like im I l L E f e U I l.

819
00:47:18,000 --> 00:47:20,640
Speaker 3: L E okay, So a thousand sheets that all have

820
00:47:20,680 --> 00:47:22,640
Speaker 3: the same experience. I was thinking like each sheet would

821
00:47:22,680 --> 00:47:26,040
Speaker 3: have a different consistency and that that would be impossible

822
00:47:26,080 --> 00:47:30,440
Speaker 3: to pull off. So anyway, we have pretty complex confection

823
00:47:30,560 --> 00:47:34,200
Speaker 3: here in dragon Beard candy with sugar floss wrapped around

824
00:47:34,239 --> 00:47:37,759
Speaker 3: a nutty center. If it sounds less sweet because of

825
00:47:37,760 --> 00:47:40,680
Speaker 3: the nuttiness, well, Lee assures us that it's plenty sweet.

826
00:47:42,200 --> 00:47:45,840
Speaker 3: You'll most likely find it in places where traditional Chinese

827
00:47:45,840 --> 00:47:48,239
Speaker 3: sweets are sold. I am not sure if I have

828
00:47:48,320 --> 00:47:50,480
Speaker 3: a local source for it here in Atlanta or and

829
00:47:50,520 --> 00:47:51,719
Speaker 3: I'm going to just have to look for it the

830
00:47:51,719 --> 00:47:55,680
Speaker 3: next time I'm in a bigger city. Listeners, do send

831
00:47:55,680 --> 00:47:58,120
Speaker 3: your recommendations if you have had this and know where

832
00:47:58,200 --> 00:48:01,680
Speaker 3: it is sold. But based on Lee's article, it sounds

833
00:48:01,719 --> 00:48:04,760
Speaker 3: like it hasn't completely caught on in the West, despite

834
00:48:04,800 --> 00:48:07,680
Speaker 3: occasional spikes and popularity as a fad, like I believe,

835
00:48:07,719 --> 00:48:09,800
Speaker 3: she mentions, like in New York at one point it

836
00:48:10,360 --> 00:48:12,759
Speaker 3: became popular for a little bit, but then people became

837
00:48:12,760 --> 00:48:16,440
Speaker 3: distracted by something else, and it hasn't really become entrenched

838
00:48:16,480 --> 00:48:22,480
Speaker 3: in the way that other imported suites have. Okay, And

839
00:48:22,600 --> 00:48:27,120
Speaker 3: as she discusses, it's pretty labor and skill intensive, so

840
00:48:27,160 --> 00:48:30,600
Speaker 3: that's another hurdle for it really taking over. According to Lee,

841
00:48:30,680 --> 00:48:33,799
Speaker 3: it takes two years of mentorship to learn to make it,

842
00:48:34,160 --> 00:48:36,960
Speaker 3: and it's one of those things like hand pulled noodles,

843
00:48:36,960 --> 00:48:39,880
Speaker 3: where half the appeal is watching someone make it. And

844
00:48:39,920 --> 00:48:44,280
Speaker 3: I guess that holds true of Western cotton candy as well,

845
00:48:44,320 --> 00:48:47,760
Speaker 3: like you want to watch the cotton candy man stick

846
00:48:47,800 --> 00:48:52,480
Speaker 3: that cone or tube into the little cauldron stirred around

847
00:48:52,840 --> 00:48:56,560
Speaker 3: and emerge with that big puff of blue sugar.

848
00:48:57,000 --> 00:48:59,760
Speaker 1: There's a kind of pleasure in watching the cotton candy

849
00:48:59,800 --> 00:49:02,719
Speaker 1: made that's similar to how people watch those videos of

850
00:49:02,719 --> 00:49:06,800
Speaker 1: things being cleaned, like people watching videos of a dirty

851
00:49:06,840 --> 00:49:10,080
Speaker 1: carpet being hosed out, or of people dusting and stuff.

852
00:49:10,280 --> 00:49:12,960
Speaker 1: There's something similar going on in the way the wisps

853
00:49:12,960 --> 00:49:13,680
Speaker 1: are collected.

854
00:49:14,200 --> 00:49:18,960
Speaker 3: Yes, it is like a spell is being cast of

855
00:49:19,200 --> 00:49:23,960
Speaker 3: dragon's beard. Candy Lee writes. Quote. Classic recipes require chefs

856
00:49:23,960 --> 00:49:28,160
Speaker 3: to heat granulated sugar and maltose together with extracting precision,

857
00:49:28,680 --> 00:49:31,719
Speaker 3: shape them into a molten puck and expand that puck

858
00:49:31,800 --> 00:49:35,480
Speaker 3: into a lasso. Then, with deft fingers and the aid

859
00:49:35,520 --> 00:49:38,880
Speaker 3: of rice flour, they stretch, pull, and fold the sugar

860
00:49:38,960 --> 00:49:42,920
Speaker 3: onto itself into a figure eight until silky Vermicelli like

861
00:49:43,000 --> 00:49:47,400
Speaker 3: strands appear, before wrapping the threads around the filling. And

862
00:49:47,440 --> 00:49:50,520
Speaker 3: you have to get the required temperatures exactly right, which

863
00:49:50,719 --> 00:49:52,960
Speaker 3: makes sense matching up with what we were talking about earlier,

864
00:49:52,960 --> 00:49:56,640
Speaker 3: with the temperature precision involved in any of these various

865
00:49:56,640 --> 00:50:00,160
Speaker 3: stages of heating sugars and syrups, and you have to

866
00:50:00,200 --> 00:50:03,600
Speaker 3: be prepared to make adjustments depending on ambient temperature as well,

867
00:50:04,120 --> 00:50:07,320
Speaker 3: especially in the case of like open carts where someone

868
00:50:07,400 --> 00:50:11,120
Speaker 3: might be making this candy. Oh yeah, and then you

869
00:50:11,200 --> 00:50:13,560
Speaker 3: really need to eat them the day off. Much like

870
00:50:13,680 --> 00:50:16,400
Speaker 3: cotton candy. It's like, you want it fresh. If it

871
00:50:16,480 --> 00:50:20,160
Speaker 3: sits around, it's not gonna hold its form. I'm assuming

872
00:50:20,200 --> 00:50:22,400
Speaker 3: the prepackaged sorts that you can buy on the internet.

873
00:50:22,680 --> 00:50:25,000
Speaker 3: It's bright, and obviously it's not gonna be the same experience,

874
00:50:25,000 --> 00:50:27,200
Speaker 3: but maybe they're able to keep it from drying out

875
00:50:27,200 --> 00:50:29,560
Speaker 3: with some air tight packaging, you know, And I guess

876
00:50:29,560 --> 00:50:31,520
Speaker 3: it's better than nothing if you don't have access to

877
00:50:31,600 --> 00:50:32,920
Speaker 3: fresh I was.

878
00:50:32,880 --> 00:50:36,000
Speaker 1: Having trouble picturing the full finished product, so I looked

879
00:50:36,000 --> 00:50:37,879
Speaker 1: it up and it looks like it. You know. It's

880
00:50:37,880 --> 00:50:41,680
Speaker 1: often made into kind of a dumpling form or it's

881
00:50:41,880 --> 00:50:44,440
Speaker 1: like a hot pocket, but with the pastry replaced with

882
00:50:44,520 --> 00:50:48,640
Speaker 1: these these white white sugar threads, and then the interior

883
00:50:48,719 --> 00:50:52,480
Speaker 1: filling being the nut coconut mixture you mentioned earlier.

884
00:50:53,040 --> 00:51:05,680
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, Now getting back to the history of this

885
00:51:05,760 --> 00:51:10,720
Speaker 3: sugary treat, Lee does cite a popular legend that Dragon's

886
00:51:10,760 --> 00:51:13,239
Speaker 3: Beard candy was an imperial treat dating back to the

887
00:51:13,320 --> 00:51:16,680
Speaker 3: Han dynasty, with the emperor himself giving it its name

888
00:51:16,960 --> 00:51:21,080
Speaker 3: since the white strands reminded him of dragon's whiskers. You'll

889
00:51:21,080 --> 00:51:24,320
Speaker 3: also find this mentioned on the Wikipedia entry for dragons

890
00:51:24,320 --> 00:51:27,240
Speaker 3: Beard candy, though the citations there don't really go anywhere active.

891
00:51:27,239 --> 00:51:31,600
Speaker 3: As far as I could tell, rumors rumors bound. So

892
00:51:31,760 --> 00:51:36,000
Speaker 3: on one hand, I think the dragons whiskers description is perfect.

893
00:51:36,200 --> 00:51:40,040
Speaker 3: To compare it to a Western movie, think of the

894
00:51:40,120 --> 00:51:43,680
Speaker 3: luck dragon from the Never Ending Story Falcore. Okay, it's

895
00:51:43,680 --> 00:51:45,719
Speaker 3: like if you had a segment of Falcre and you

896
00:51:45,880 --> 00:51:48,960
Speaker 3: like sliced into them, and yeah, you would have like

897
00:51:49,000 --> 00:51:52,640
Speaker 3: the nougat like center with the nuts and the coconut

898
00:51:52,680 --> 00:51:57,040
Speaker 3: and all, and then the white fur on the outside.

899
00:51:56,640 --> 00:51:59,879
Speaker 1: Shave of Fulcore. Wrap it around, wrap the trimmings around

900
00:52:00,040 --> 00:52:01,040
Speaker 1: some nuts. There you go.

901
00:52:01,360 --> 00:52:05,719
Speaker 3: Yeah. So, in past episodes on inventions, we've discussed the

902
00:52:05,800 --> 00:52:11,480
Speaker 3: questionable historical accuracy of anything that is attributed to an emperor,

903
00:52:11,640 --> 00:52:16,640
Speaker 3: Chinese or otherwise in terms of its invention. Sometimes the

904
00:52:17,560 --> 00:52:20,319
Speaker 3: guy the top gets to take all the credit and

905
00:52:20,760 --> 00:52:22,600
Speaker 3: a lot of legends there, yeah, a lot of legends.

906
00:52:22,600 --> 00:52:24,920
Speaker 3: And while it's the naming here and not the invention

907
00:52:25,040 --> 00:52:28,319
Speaker 3: itself that is attributed to a hunt emperor. I think

908
00:52:28,320 --> 00:52:32,080
Speaker 3: we might exercise similar caution. But the more interesting question

909
00:52:32,239 --> 00:52:35,759
Speaker 3: here is really whether there is any indication that this

910
00:52:35,800 --> 00:52:39,720
Speaker 3: desert item or something much like it, actually dates back

911
00:52:40,000 --> 00:52:44,440
Speaker 3: to the year two twenty CE or much earlier. Okay,

912
00:52:44,520 --> 00:52:46,440
Speaker 3: So I turned to a couple of other sources on this.

913
00:52:46,880 --> 00:52:50,560
Speaker 3: About the history of sweets and sugar in general, it's

914
00:52:50,600 --> 00:52:54,080
Speaker 3: pointed out by Tim Richardson in Sweets a history of candy.

915
00:52:54,440 --> 00:52:58,080
Speaker 3: Sugarcane was introduced into China early in the first millennium BCE,

916
00:52:58,960 --> 00:53:02,680
Speaker 3: but that, unlike with India, it didn't develop. China didn't

917
00:53:02,680 --> 00:53:07,319
Speaker 3: develop a sugar based sweet culture and arguably never really did,

918
00:53:07,360 --> 00:53:09,480
Speaker 3: at least not on the scale comparable to the robust

919
00:53:09,560 --> 00:53:12,600
Speaker 3: tradition of sweets that you find on the Indian subcontinent.

920
00:53:13,320 --> 00:53:15,799
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, Maltos.

921
00:53:15,280 --> 00:53:18,640
Speaker 3: Which I mentioned earlier, remained the sweetener of choice in China.

922
00:53:19,320 --> 00:53:22,560
Speaker 3: This is a jelly extracted from grains and sorghum reeds.

923
00:53:23,280 --> 00:53:27,960
Speaker 3: Honey was also used, and they long remained dependent on

924
00:53:28,120 --> 00:53:31,600
Speaker 3: imported sugar from India and Indo China for anything that

925
00:53:31,640 --> 00:53:34,000
Speaker 3: actually called for sugar or some mix of sugar and

926
00:53:34,000 --> 00:53:37,839
Speaker 3: these other sweeteners and Richardson rides that this was likely

927
00:53:37,920 --> 00:53:42,440
Speaker 3: due to technological difficulties with sugar refinement and or just

928
00:53:42,640 --> 00:53:46,840
Speaker 3: lack of demand for it, okay, which makes sense. It's like,

929
00:53:46,880 --> 00:53:50,920
Speaker 3: it's one thing to acquire the secrets of sugar refining,

930
00:53:51,239 --> 00:53:53,120
Speaker 3: but then is there a need for it? Do people

931
00:53:53,200 --> 00:53:56,239
Speaker 3: actually want it? As is it anything other than a

932
00:53:56,320 --> 00:53:58,520
Speaker 3: novelty for the court. And if it is just a

933
00:53:58,560 --> 00:54:03,160
Speaker 3: novelty for the court, maybe you just keep importing it, right, yeah, yeah,

934
00:54:03,239 --> 00:54:06,480
Speaker 3: And so Richardson says it wasn't till six forty seven

935
00:54:06,600 --> 00:54:09,560
Speaker 3: CE that the emperor at the time, and I believe

936
00:54:09,560 --> 00:54:13,400
Speaker 3: this would be Tongu Tai Zong sent delegates to India

937
00:54:13,440 --> 00:54:16,560
Speaker 3: to learn the secrets of sugar refinery, and from then

938
00:54:16,600 --> 00:54:19,480
Speaker 3: on there are various Chinese advancements in the sugar industry.

939
00:54:19,760 --> 00:54:22,919
Speaker 3: In twelve eighty, Ridges And points out that Kubla Khan

940
00:54:23,600 --> 00:54:27,520
Speaker 3: brought in Egyptian experts to share the secrets of white sugar, which,

941
00:54:27,560 --> 00:54:29,359
Speaker 3: you know, if you're going to have a stately pleasure dome,

942
00:54:29,719 --> 00:54:30,840
Speaker 3: got to have that white sugar.

943
00:54:31,120 --> 00:54:34,919
Speaker 1: Yeah. Just did he have cotton candy in the pleasure dome?

944
00:54:35,400 --> 00:54:37,200
Speaker 3: I mean it's the perfect place for it. Right, I

945
00:54:37,200 --> 00:54:40,960
Speaker 3: can imagine Kubla Khan with some sort of cotton candy

946
00:54:40,960 --> 00:54:41,520
Speaker 3: in each hand.

947
00:54:41,880 --> 00:54:43,560
Speaker 1: Though you know what happens when you get it. Wet

948
00:54:43,920 --> 00:54:50,080
Speaker 1: goes down through the caverns, measureless, demand less. See nice.

949
00:54:50,200 --> 00:54:52,440
Speaker 3: Another book, I Was Looking at Sweets and Candy, A

950
00:54:52,480 --> 00:54:57,200
Speaker 3: Global History by Laura Mason, discusses Dragon's Beard candy briefly

951
00:54:57,239 --> 00:55:01,239
Speaker 3: within the larger context of pulled sugar sweet that is,

952
00:55:01,280 --> 00:55:04,920
Speaker 3: again syrup boiled to a crack and while malleable, worked

953
00:55:04,920 --> 00:55:08,279
Speaker 3: into desired forms and literally pulled by hands and or

954
00:55:08,320 --> 00:55:12,600
Speaker 3: hooks to create ropes and threads. She defines this process

955
00:55:12,600 --> 00:55:17,160
Speaker 3: as ancient but also not necessarily well recorded. She mentions

956
00:55:17,160 --> 00:55:21,880
Speaker 3: that the pulling of these confections was probably or perhaps

957
00:55:22,000 --> 00:55:26,240
Speaker 3: originally thought to quote convey special qualities, and I believe

958
00:55:26,280 --> 00:55:29,520
Speaker 3: these special qualities are linked to the rarity of sugar

959
00:55:29,920 --> 00:55:32,520
Speaker 3: in some of the places where this would have been conducted,

960
00:55:32,760 --> 00:55:36,600
Speaker 3: and also the seeming alchemy of working it into these shapes,

961
00:55:37,200 --> 00:55:40,400
Speaker 3: sometimes shapes that themselves might convey special meanings, such as

962
00:55:40,480 --> 00:55:44,040
Speaker 3: rings and circles. But also yet, just coming back to

963
00:55:44,360 --> 00:55:49,080
Speaker 3: the modern example of cotton candy, watching its creation does

964
00:55:49,160 --> 00:55:51,640
Speaker 3: feel like a kind of magic, and we can imagine

965
00:55:51,920 --> 00:55:57,400
Speaker 3: easily imagine our ancestors and parts around the world engaging

966
00:55:57,400 --> 00:55:58,640
Speaker 3: in a similar fascination.

967
00:55:59,000 --> 00:56:01,200
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean this takes back to something we talked

968
00:56:01,200 --> 00:56:03,239
Speaker 1: about at the beginning of the chemistry section, which is

969
00:56:03,280 --> 00:56:07,919
Speaker 1: like the minute attention before modern thermometer is that would

970
00:56:07,920 --> 00:56:11,400
Speaker 1: allow you to, you know, to just easily judge exactly

971
00:56:11,440 --> 00:56:14,200
Speaker 1: how hot your boiled syrup mixture is getting, like the

972
00:56:14,239 --> 00:56:17,400
Speaker 1: attention and know how required to get it to just

973
00:56:17,480 --> 00:56:19,560
Speaker 1: the right temperature to have the properties you want.

974
00:56:20,040 --> 00:56:25,840
Speaker 3: Yeah. She stresses that broadly. With pulled sugar confections, colors

975
00:56:25,840 --> 00:56:29,680
Speaker 3: can be added, and I don't think I was fully

976
00:56:29,719 --> 00:56:31,840
Speaker 3: aware of this, but this is where the basics of

977
00:56:31,880 --> 00:56:36,040
Speaker 3: the candy cane come into play. Traditionally, candy cane is

978
00:56:36,120 --> 00:56:40,880
Speaker 3: apparently more of a pulled sugar confection, but not necessarily

979
00:56:40,880 --> 00:56:45,080
Speaker 3: in its modern mass manufactured version. And then there are

980
00:56:45,160 --> 00:56:48,360
Speaker 3: various pulled candy traditions and pretty much every culture to

981
00:56:48,400 --> 00:56:50,880
Speaker 3: sort of catch the pulled sugar bug as it traveled

982
00:56:50,880 --> 00:56:54,239
Speaker 3: out of sugar rich lands into other realms. She of

983
00:56:54,280 --> 00:56:59,960
Speaker 3: course highlights pulled Turkish keton halva, also known as piecemagna,

984
00:57:00,960 --> 00:57:03,719
Speaker 3: noting the addition of butter and flour in that process.

985
00:57:05,000 --> 00:57:08,919
Speaker 3: She stresses that Keaton halva is different from cotton candy, though,

986
00:57:09,480 --> 00:57:13,160
Speaker 3: and that there's no true Western equivalent. As cotton candy,

987
00:57:13,280 --> 00:57:16,720
Speaker 3: she writes, is coarse and gritty. I don't remember if

988
00:57:16,720 --> 00:57:20,120
Speaker 3: that's accurate, but it sounds right. I do vaguely recall

989
00:57:20,240 --> 00:57:22,360
Speaker 3: sort of a grittiness to it, but at least right

990
00:57:22,360 --> 00:57:26,840
Speaker 3: before it melts well, keats and hav is smooth or soft.

991
00:57:27,280 --> 00:57:29,800
Speaker 3: But of course, pulled sugar in the West also connects

992
00:57:29,880 --> 00:57:33,920
Speaker 3: into traditions of pulled tathy the example many listeners may

993
00:57:33,920 --> 00:57:35,960
Speaker 3: be familiar with, and you know, generally you have like

994
00:57:36,400 --> 00:57:39,080
Speaker 3: some sort of machine with hooks for that. And Dragon's

995
00:57:39,120 --> 00:57:42,240
Speaker 3: Beard candy, she writes, is closer to Keithon halva and

996
00:57:42,520 --> 00:57:46,080
Speaker 3: related confections, and accounts of Keaton halve date back at

997
00:57:46,200 --> 00:57:49,720
Speaker 3: least as far as the early fifteenth century CE. As

998
00:57:49,760 --> 00:57:53,320
Speaker 3: for the earliest possible origin of Dragon's Beard candy, she

999
00:57:53,360 --> 00:57:57,919
Speaker 3: does write that a Chinese confectionery tradition probably developed from

1000
00:57:57,960 --> 00:58:01,560
Speaker 3: around the seventh century CE, when sugar began to replace

1001
00:58:01,600 --> 00:58:07,600
Speaker 3: honey in sweetcakes. In Chinese culinary traditions, sugar based items though,

1002
00:58:07,680 --> 00:58:10,800
Speaker 3: would have been only for the aristocracy, and it would

1003
00:58:10,800 --> 00:58:14,480
Speaker 3: remain that way for centuries. So it would seem possible

1004
00:58:14,880 --> 00:58:17,800
Speaker 3: that some form of pulled sugar treat, even something close

1005
00:58:17,840 --> 00:58:20,560
Speaker 3: to what we know of as dragon's beard candy today,

1006
00:58:21,560 --> 00:58:24,720
Speaker 3: was brought before a Han Chinese emperor. It seems like

1007
00:58:24,880 --> 00:58:28,000
Speaker 3: it's possible. But it also seems possible that this treat

1008
00:58:28,080 --> 00:58:31,200
Speaker 3: might have developed later, during at least the seventh century

1009
00:58:31,280 --> 00:58:34,200
Speaker 3: rather than the third century seee. I wish there were

1010
00:58:34,960 --> 00:58:39,040
Speaker 3: firmer sources on the Han dynasty legend here, but I

1011
00:58:39,040 --> 00:58:41,280
Speaker 3: at least couldn't find them in English. So if anyone

1012
00:58:41,320 --> 00:58:44,520
Speaker 3: out there has access to additional data on this legend,

1013
00:58:45,240 --> 00:58:45,920
Speaker 3: I would love.

1014
00:58:45,800 --> 00:58:48,120
Speaker 1: To hear about it totally. Yeah.

1015
00:58:48,520 --> 00:58:51,800
Speaker 3: Also, I mean, as we've been discussing here, like sugar

1016
00:58:51,880 --> 00:58:55,960
Speaker 3: and treats, they do seem to travel reasonably easy from

1017
00:58:55,960 --> 00:58:58,880
Speaker 3: one culture to another, so you'll often find different versions

1018
00:58:58,920 --> 00:59:03,080
Speaker 3: of cotton candy or or dragon's beard candy or something

1019
00:59:03,160 --> 00:59:07,040
Speaker 3: like this in various other cultures. Like there there's like

1020
00:59:07,080 --> 00:59:11,880
Speaker 3: a Korean version of of a poll sugar tree. There's

1021
00:59:11,920 --> 00:59:15,680
Speaker 3: a Persian variant of halva that is called Pashmak. There's

1022
00:59:15,680 --> 00:59:18,560
Speaker 3: an Indian variant. It's called a belief sown pop D.

1023
00:59:19,320 --> 00:59:23,280
Speaker 3: So you know, there are probably endless variations across time

1024
00:59:23,320 --> 00:59:23,800
Speaker 3: and space.

1025
00:59:24,960 --> 00:59:27,000
Speaker 1: But also speaking of time and space, I mean I

1026
00:59:27,000 --> 00:59:31,280
Speaker 1: think about how when you get into these really delicate

1027
00:59:31,400 --> 00:59:36,120
Speaker 1: versions of sponge sugar, they become increasingly sensitive to atmospheric conditions,

1028
00:59:36,120 --> 00:59:40,440
Speaker 1: which may limit their ability to certainly their ability to

1029
00:59:40,600 --> 00:59:44,600
Speaker 1: travel as finished products. You know, you would have trouble

1030
00:59:44,640 --> 00:59:47,040
Speaker 1: like making a confection like this and then having it

1031
00:59:47,120 --> 00:59:50,000
Speaker 1: survive a I don't know, a trip to market or

1032
00:59:50,040 --> 00:59:53,680
Speaker 1: something like that, so much like they're made at the

1033
00:59:53,720 --> 00:59:57,720
Speaker 1: fair these days. It's something that in most conditions would

1034
00:59:57,720 --> 00:59:59,760
Speaker 1: probably need to be eaten immediately, but maybe in some

1035
00:59:59,840 --> 01:00:02,440
Speaker 1: way conditions I don't know, like a cold, dry place

1036
01:00:02,560 --> 01:00:05,080
Speaker 1: or something, it could survive longer.

1037
01:00:05,600 --> 01:00:08,760
Speaker 3: It definitely seems the case where if word of this

1038
01:00:08,880 --> 01:00:12,960
Speaker 3: treat traveled to your emperor, you would have to quickly realize, well,

1039
01:00:12,960 --> 01:00:15,320
Speaker 3: I just can't tell the emperor about this. I have

1040
01:00:15,440 --> 01:00:19,640
Speaker 3: to bring someone with their supplies and their tools in

1041
01:00:19,760 --> 01:00:21,320
Speaker 3: order to make this for the emperor.

1042
01:00:21,640 --> 01:00:23,640
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, you can't like make it ahead and bring

1043
01:00:23,680 --> 01:00:24,840
Speaker 1: it to that. You've got to make it there.

1044
01:00:25,280 --> 01:00:28,680
Speaker 3: Yeah, and again as the sources noted, there's a lot

1045
01:00:28,720 --> 01:00:32,080
Speaker 3: that's been lost to history. Sugary treats are not always

1046
01:00:33,080 --> 01:00:35,640
Speaker 3: the things that are talked about in the surviving histories.

1047
01:00:36,000 --> 01:00:37,560
Speaker 3: All right, we're going to go ahead and close this

1048
01:00:37,600 --> 01:00:39,280
Speaker 3: episode out, but we're going to come back for at

1049
01:00:39,360 --> 01:00:41,920
Speaker 3: least a part two on cotton candy because there's more

1050
01:00:42,000 --> 01:00:45,120
Speaker 3: to discuss. I think we're probably going to get into

1051
01:00:45,240 --> 01:00:49,880
Speaker 3: the twentieth century origins of modern cotton candy a bit,

1052
01:00:50,200 --> 01:00:53,080
Speaker 3: and then there are also going to be some offshoots,

1053
01:00:53,120 --> 01:00:55,280
Speaker 3: things that are maybe cotton candy and name only but

1054
01:00:55,320 --> 01:01:00,720
Speaker 3: are still pretty fascinating from other disciplines of the science world.

1055
01:01:01,120 --> 01:01:01,680
Speaker 1: Can't wait.

1056
01:01:02,360 --> 01:01:04,520
Speaker 3: All right, just a reminder to everyone out there that

1057
01:01:04,600 --> 01:01:06,480
Speaker 3: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science and

1058
01:01:06,520 --> 01:01:09,280
Speaker 3: culture podcast, with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, short

1059
01:01:09,280 --> 01:01:12,200
Speaker 3: form episodes on Wednesdays and on Fridays. We set aside

1060
01:01:12,200 --> 01:01:14,400
Speaker 3: most serious concerns to just talk about a weird film

1061
01:01:14,480 --> 01:01:17,120
Speaker 3: on Weird House Cinema. If you are, let's see, if

1062
01:01:17,120 --> 01:01:19,920
Speaker 3: you're on the social media's, you can find us on

1063
01:01:19,960 --> 01:01:22,720
Speaker 3: most of those major platforms. If you're on Instagram, we're

1064
01:01:22,800 --> 01:01:24,120
Speaker 3: stvym podcast.

1065
01:01:25,000 --> 01:01:28,680
Speaker 1: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.

1066
01:01:28,920 --> 01:01:30,480
Speaker 1: If you would like to get in touch with us

1067
01:01:30,480 --> 01:01:32,920
Speaker 1: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest

1068
01:01:32,920 --> 01:01:35,040
Speaker 1: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,

1069
01:01:35,160 --> 01:01:37,760
Speaker 1: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow

1070
01:01:37,800 --> 01:01:46,880
Speaker 1: your Mind dot com.

1071
01:01:47,000 --> 01:01:49,920
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1072
01:01:50,040 --> 01:01:52,800
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1073
01:01:52,960 --> 01:02:09,960
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