Speaker 1: Cotton Candy by Edward Hirsch. We walked on the bridge
Speaker 1: over the Chicago River for what turned out to be
Speaker 1: the last time, and I a cotton candy, that sugary air,
Speaker 1: that sweet blue light, spun out of nothingness. It was
Speaker 1: just a moment, really, nothing more. But I remember marveling
Speaker 1: at the sturdy cables of the bridge that held us up,
Speaker 1: and threading my fingers through the long and slender fingers
Speaker 1: of my grandfather, an old man from the old world
Speaker 1: who long ago disappeared into the nether regions. And I
Speaker 1: remember that eight year old boy who had tasted the
Speaker 1: sweetness of air which still clings to my mouth and
Speaker 1: disappears when I breathe.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3: Hey, Welcome to Stuff to Blow your My name is
Speaker 3: Robert Lamb.
Speaker 1: And I am Joe McCormick. And that was I said
Speaker 1: it in the opening. But again, that was the poem
Speaker 1: Cotton Candy by the American poet Edward Hirsh. And that's
Speaker 1: going to be relevant today because we're starting a couple
Speaker 1: of episodes on the subject of cotton candy and some
Speaker 1: of its historical predecessors. But I thought this would be
Speaker 1: a good poem to feature, first of all, just because
Speaker 1: I love it. It's very plainly stated, but very beautiful,
Speaker 1: very evocative. There's something strong lurking in it about the
Speaker 1: interplay of strength and permanence. On one hand, with the
Speaker 1: imagery of the cables on the bridge and the kind
Speaker 1: of tenacity of memory, but then on the other hand,
Speaker 1: about ephemerality, like the fleetingness of human life and the
Speaker 1: inherent nothing substance of cotton candy, which somehow feels after
Speaker 1: it's eaten like it never existed, like it was never
Speaker 1: a substance to begin with, and yet it persists as
Speaker 1: a taste that clings to the mouth, as Hirsch says,
Speaker 1: clings to the mouth and disappears when you breathe kind
Speaker 1: of implying that there are some things that are ephemeral
Speaker 1: and they disappear when we live. But anyway, to move
Speaker 1: on to the subject, Yes, we're going to be talking
Speaker 1: about cotton candy aka candy floss aka fairy flass. Now, Rob,
Speaker 1: I don't know if you think along the same lines
Speaker 1: as me here, but these alternate terms for cotton candy,
Speaker 1: which I have encountered before, always struck me as incredibly
Speaker 1: disgusting because, like a lot of American English speakers my age,
Speaker 1: I assume the only time I ever used the word
Speaker 1: floss is when referring to dental floss, and in fact,
Speaker 1: for most of my life, I just assumed that the
Speaker 1: dental application was the primary or even only meaning of
Speaker 1: the word floss is dental flaws.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, I mean, that's obviously the primary way I
Speaker 3: use it, and the other usages of floss that I've
Speaker 3: encountered are always, you know, expressly or I feel like
Speaker 3: I got the the impression that they were derived from
Speaker 3: dental floss, like everything begins with dental floss, and therefore
Speaker 3: the idea of there being like a parallel usage of
Speaker 3: it just didn't occur to me either.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, So historically this is not the case. The
Speaker 1: English word floss, from what I can tell, has uncertain
Speaker 1: etymological roots. It might be related to the English word fleece,
Speaker 1: which goes back to wool from a sheep or similar animal.
Speaker 1: Or it might come from a French term flash, meaning
Speaker 1: maybe wool or perhaps silk. But anyway, floss means fibers
Speaker 1: like silk, wool, hair, or thread. So candy floss is
Speaker 1: candy hair, which also doesn't sound very good. Maybe it's
Speaker 1: just cultural familiarity because you also don't eat cotton, But
Speaker 1: for some reason, to me, cotton candy is about as
Speaker 1: appetizing as the terms for this substance get.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Plus, at least like cotton has, you know, it's
Speaker 3: organic in nature, and therefore it's like cotton cant that
Speaker 3: just sounds straight good for you, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right, Yeah, it's health food.
Speaker 3: When, of course, if I'm assuming everyone out there has
Speaker 3: either had a cotton candy or some derivative cotton candy
Speaker 3: or even counted it, you know that it is, as
Speaker 3: the poem so wonderfully describes it, blue light spun out
Speaker 3: of nothingness. It's sugary air. It's just sweetness, like aggressive
Speaker 3: sweetness in this like strange, barely physical form. It just
Speaker 3: melts in your mouth immediately. And of course I'm always
Speaker 3: reminded of that video that we discussed in past episodes
Speaker 3: about raccoons, where raccoon has given cotton candy and the
Speaker 3: raccoon lowers it into the water as they are wont
Speaker 3: to do, and then the raccoon is seemingly just horrified
Speaker 3: when it melts away and just like instantly vanishes.
Speaker 1: Just a diamond of sadness and disappointment. Yeah, a little video. Yeah,
Speaker 1: another question to lodge here at the beginning. I think
Speaker 1: maybe we can partially answer this as we go along,
Speaker 1: But I was thinking, why is it that we associate
Speaker 1: cotton candy with fairs and carnivals. Why is it something
Speaker 1: you get at the amusement park or the county Fair
Speaker 1: and other candies are not something like I mean, I
Speaker 1: guess you can get you some sweet tarts at the
Speaker 1: County Fair, but it's a particular kind of event associated
Speaker 1: candy unlike many others.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, as we'll discuss, I mean, basically get
Speaker 3: into the fact that it does have twentieth century origins
Speaker 3: that are very tightly bound to the World's Fair, So
Speaker 3: it kind of to a large extent, is born out
Speaker 3: of the World's Fair. The technology to create it has
Speaker 3: long been very mobile, works well with like a food
Speaker 3: cart sort of a situation, but it does drag in
Speaker 3: all these other additional aspects. Like I think of cotton candy,
Speaker 3: which I have not had since I was a child
Speaker 3: for obvious reasons, it makes me think of stickiness out
Speaker 3: in public away from a place to wash your hands.
Speaker 3: It makes me think of like sweating and eating cotton
Speaker 3: candy at the same time. Like there's a certain grunginess
Speaker 3: to the experience that is not, you know, altogether, you know,
Speaker 3: unattractive to the childhood brain. But but you know, yeah,
Speaker 3: it is closely associated with like an outdoor, dizzy environment.
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, I guess a lot of parents would
Speaker 1: not be thrilled at the idea of like bringing home
Speaker 1: a tub of cotton candy for their child to eat
Speaker 1: at home.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but kids won I mean it's bright, it's it's
Speaker 3: amazing looking, it's novel, and I think all kids should
Speaker 3: have it. You know, at least a few times. I
Speaker 3: think I was asking my own child, was like like, yeah,
Speaker 3: what was your favorite cotton candy that you ever had?
Speaker 3: And they're like, oh, I think I only had it once,
Speaker 3: And I think maybe it was more than once. But still, yeah,
Speaker 3: I probably have been kind of limiting on the cotton candy.
Speaker 3: Like it's one of those things as a parent when
Speaker 3: you're as if you can get cotton candy, you might
Speaker 3: be inclined to sort of steer them towards something else.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a great thing. To bring as a treat
Speaker 1: to the children of someone else at their house. Hey,
Speaker 1: kids play with this in the living room.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because it's pure sugar, it's it's sticky, has no
Speaker 3: real nutritional value, it's pure novel and therefore it is
Speaker 3: the perfect thing to have it affair.
Speaker 1: And that it's one of those foods where the appeal
Speaker 1: of it is pure sensory novelty. Like it's really not
Speaker 1: going to be like the best tasting candy you're going
Speaker 1: to ever have. It's like, what's appealing about it is
Speaker 1: that it is unusual, that it looks interesting, and that
Speaker 1: it feels interesting in the mouth.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we'll get into much later in this discussion. That
Speaker 3: there are some traditions of cotton candy and some technologies
Speaker 3: with cotton candy that are like pushing the boundaries of
Speaker 3: what's possible, and they've managed to make it look even
Speaker 3: more amazing, even more like some sort of a strange
Speaker 3: blue sugar flame brought forth from another realm. But I
Speaker 3: haven't tried it, and I suspect that the taste can
Speaker 3: only be so complex because it is still is just
Speaker 3: like an assault of sweetness. I would imagine. Yeah, I
Speaker 3: feel like there's also concerning fars, there's the not quite
Speaker 3: overt connection to be made between cotton candy and clown hair.
Speaker 3: You know, clowns have bright colored hair that is often
Speaker 3: in big poofy arrays that may resemble cotton candy. Uh
Speaker 3: huh yeah yeah, And for me too, I'm also reminded
Speaker 3: of Killer Clowns from Outer Space, the horror movie from
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty eight, in which you have an array of
Speaker 3: wonderfully grotesque and colorful clowns I think some of the
Speaker 3: best horror movie clowns ever. And there are some key
Speaker 3: sequences where we find out that they use cotton candy
Speaker 3: to spin cocoons around their human victims.
Speaker 1: I'd forgotten about that, yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that wonderful usage. And I also it interesting
Speaker 3: because obviously there's a comparison being made here between spun
Speaker 3: cotton candy and spun silk cocoons. And you actually find
Speaker 3: these connections made as well in some Chinese traditions with
Speaker 3: particular confections that are at least a kin to cotton candy. Okay,
Speaker 3: all right, so at this point we really should turn
Speaker 3: to a very obvious question before we get into the
Speaker 3: history and invention of cotton candy properly? What is it?
Speaker 3: What is this strange blue sugar air that is summoned
Speaker 3: out of some sort of a technological vat when a
Speaker 3: man sticks to it like a paper cone or conical
Speaker 3: array into it like a pit.
Speaker 1: Yes, very good question, And the science behind cotton candy
Speaker 1: turned out to be surprisingly fascinating, at least to me.
Speaker 1: It sent me on a number of unexpected tangents. So
Speaker 1: I hope you'll enjoy coming along with me. So I
Speaker 1: want to shout out one of the best sources I
Speaker 1: found on this, which was a series of chapters in
Speaker 1: a book called Candy Bites, The Science of Sweets. This
Speaker 1: was by authors Richard W. Hardle and Anikate Hardle. Richard
Speaker 1: Hardle is a professor of food science at the University
Speaker 1: of Wisconsin. Now, to really understand what's going on here,
Speaker 1: before we get into the direct how and why of
Speaker 1: cotton candy, we should do a brief explainer on the
Speaker 1: science of heating sugar syrup, which is a mixture of
Speaker 1: sugar and water. The precise heating of sugar syrup is
Speaker 1: actually a big part of the candy making process, and
Speaker 1: the authors of this book talk about a fact that
Speaker 1: I thought was quite wild. They discuss how before candy
Speaker 1: thermometers were in common, use candy thermometer. If you've never
Speaker 1: seen it before, you know, it's just a type of
Speaker 1: thermometer with a certain temperature range. You pin it to
Speaker 1: the side of a pot or whatever vessel you're heating
Speaker 1: your sugar syrup in, and it has sort of markers
Speaker 1: on it that will let you know different stages of
Speaker 1: the sugar syrup heating process. And I'll explain more about
Speaker 1: that in a minute. But apparently, in the old school days,
Speaker 1: the old days, a lot of candy makers would test
Speaker 1: the temperature of their boiling syrup by feel literally with
Speaker 1: their fingers. Please do not try this yourself. This could
Speaker 1: lead to horrible, horrible burns. Like the only thing worse
Speaker 1: than touching a boiling hot liquid is touching a hot
Speaker 1: liquid that sticks to your skin. Oh apparently, and please
Speaker 1: don't get any ideas. I'm just gonna describe the trick here.
Speaker 1: But you don't know how to do it. Okay, you
Speaker 1: don't know how to do it right, so don't try
Speaker 1: this at home. Apparently the trick was the old candy
Speaker 1: maker would dip their fingers into cold water first and
Speaker 1: then quickly dip them in the hot sugar syrup and
Speaker 1: then back into the cold water again. Please do not
Speaker 1: try this. Apparently there's kind of an art to doing
Speaker 1: it right, and even experienced candy makers would end up
Speaker 1: with serious injuries and scars. But the idea is that
Speaker 1: the feel of the boiling syrup, along with the visual appearance,
Speaker 1: would help them know what temperature the syrup had reached.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this detail. I'd never run across this before, but
Speaker 3: this matches up with other things I was reading about
Speaker 3: in terms of confectionery traditions and different cultures. And you
Speaker 3: can just look around you and certainly in any major
Speaker 3: city and you can see examples of this. Like, to
Speaker 3: be a candy maker is to engage in a specialized profession.
Speaker 3: Like it not everyone can do it. Yeah, it's serious business,
Speaker 3: and you know, you have to be mentored into it.
Speaker 3: You have to learn the tricks and the art of
Speaker 3: the trade.
Speaker 1: Now, the question is why would it be so important
Speaker 1: to know exactly what temperature you're boiling sugar syrup had reached.
Speaker 1: You know, why would you actually risk third degree burns
Speaker 1: just to know what temperature exactly the syrup was well,
Speaker 1: it's because the chemical and physical properties of sugar syrup
Speaker 1: change greatly depending on exactly how hot it has gotten.
Speaker 1: So the author mention these benchmarks. I don't know if
Speaker 1: this is the exact terminology you'll see on most candy
Speaker 1: making thermometers, but they mentioned the following stages. Okay, there
Speaker 1: is the thread state and these I'm not going to
Speaker 1: give the temperatures for everything, but it starts with the
Speaker 1: thread state at two hundred and thirty degrees fahrenheit or
Speaker 1: one hundred and ten celsius. And the final state I'm
Speaker 1: going to mention, is it about three hundred and five
Speaker 1: degrees fahrenheit or one hundred and fifty two celsius. The
Speaker 1: states are thread state, then you get soft ball state,
Speaker 1: firm ball state, then hardball, soft crack, and hard crack.
Speaker 1: Aren't these enticing to your mind? Don't you want to
Speaker 1: know what all of these mean?
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's a lot of baseball terminology.
Speaker 1: It sounds like it has nothing to do with basement,
Speaker 1: nothing at all. Oh, it does sound like all of
Speaker 1: them could be like a hard crack is like the
Speaker 1: site of the bad hitting. No, no, nothing to do
Speaker 1: with baseball. It'll all make sense.
Speaker 3: In the end, the thread state is when you just
Speaker 3: lasen up your boots and there it is. It all works.
Speaker 1: That's right, should have the trash talking state. So the
Speaker 1: interesting thing about sugar syrup, this makes it very different
Speaker 1: from plain water, is that as you continue to boil
Speaker 1: it over time, its boiling point goes up. Now, how
Speaker 1: is that possible? After all, we all know that when
Speaker 1: you boil a pot of water, it has a maximum
Speaker 1: temperature at one atmosphere of pressure. The hottest your boiling
Speaker 1: water can get is two twelve fahrenheit or one hundred
Speaker 1: degrees celsius. You keep applying heat to the pot and
Speaker 1: it will never get any hotter as long as it
Speaker 1: can boil off. I mean, if you use a pressure
Speaker 1: cooker and you pressurize it, you prevent the steam from escaping,
Speaker 1: you can get it hotter. But if it is at
Speaker 1: regular pressure the steam can escape. It will just keep
Speaker 1: boiling at the boiling point, never get any hotter until
Speaker 1: all the water has evaporated. However, when you add a
Speaker 1: significant amount of sugar to the water, you actually increase
Speaker 1: the boiling point of the solution. The sugar molecules dissolve
Speaker 1: in the solution make the water molecules more resistant to evaporation.
Speaker 1: When you've got sugar in the water, it's harder for
Speaker 1: those water molecules at the surface of the pot of
Speaker 1: water to make the phase transition into steam and boil off.
Speaker 1: So it takes more energy to boil the solution, which
Speaker 1: means the boiling point goes up. Mix in sugar, it's
Speaker 1: got a higher boiling point. But here's the interesting thing.
Speaker 1: The amount of energy it takes to evaporate water from
Speaker 1: the solution is proportional to the sugar content. So the
Speaker 1: more sugar is in the solution relative to the amount
Speaker 1: of water, the higher the boiling point. So as you
Speaker 1: heat the sugar syrup to its boiling point, water evaporates,
Speaker 1: it does boil off, and this increases the ratio of
Speaker 1: sugar to water in the syrup and thus increases the
Speaker 1: boiling point even further. And it will do this until
Speaker 1: eventually all of the water is evaporated or almost all
Speaker 1: of the water is gone, and at some point the
Speaker 1: sugar will just burn beyond increasing the boiling point. Another
Speaker 1: consequence of increasing the sugar to water ratio of the
Speaker 1: syrup through heating is that the viscosity of the syrup increases.
Speaker 1: In other words, it becomes thicker. And this increase in
Speaker 1: viscosity is what candy makers are talking about with phrases
Speaker 1: like soft ball, hard ball, soft crack, and so forth.
Speaker 1: So these terms mostly describes something about what a drop
Speaker 1: of the syrup at each temperature and viscosity state does
Speaker 1: when you scoop it out, you PLoP it into a
Speaker 1: bowl of cold water. So, for example, at the soft
Speaker 1: ball state, you drop a bit of the syrup into
Speaker 1: cold water, and first it forms little threads, and you
Speaker 1: can gather these up and mold them into a soft
Speaker 1: mass with your fingers. But the syrup at the soft
Speaker 1: ball stage is not thick enough to hold its shape
Speaker 1: and it will slowly collapse and flow under the force
Speaker 1: of gravity alone. So imagine the texture of like the
Speaker 1: soft caramel filling in a chocolate truffle. And so from
Speaker 1: here we go up the chain. You go to the
Speaker 1: firm ball state. This means you can make it into
Speaker 1: a ball. You can form it into a ball with
Speaker 1: your hands, but it will be easily deformed and molded
Speaker 1: with the fingers. It'll basically hold its shape against gravity.
Speaker 1: At the hard ball stage, the cooled syrup will firmly
Speaker 1: retain its shape. The authors use saltwater taffy as an
Speaker 1: example of this texture. And after the ball stages, you've
Speaker 1: got the crack stages, soft crack and hard crack. And
Speaker 1: the authors describe this this point as follows quote. Sugar
Speaker 1: syrup cooked to three hundred degrees fahrenheit and cooled quickly
Speaker 1: in cold water forms hard brittle threads that crack when
Speaker 1: you snap them. Thus the hard cracked state. In fact,
Speaker 1: sugar cooked to this temperature and cooled quickly to room
Speaker 1: temperature turns into a sugar glass and amorphous matrix of
Speaker 1: sugar molecules that has solid like characteristics. Hard candy and
Speaker 1: brittles are cooked to three hundred degrees fahrenheit to form
Speaker 1: sugar glasses. So really, when you come back to the
Speaker 1: idea of monitoring the temperatures the syrup boils, the temperature
Speaker 1: monitoring is an indirect way for the candy maker to
Speaker 1: measure the remaining water content of the syrup, since the
Speaker 1: boiling point goes up as the water content goes down. Now,
Speaker 1: regarding this concept of sugar glass from the quote I read,
Speaker 1: there's actually another chapter in the book on this idea,
Speaker 1: which is both interesting on its own and relevant to
Speaker 1: the subject of cotton candy, because, as counterintuitive as this sounds,
Speaker 1: cotton candy, this fluffy melt in your mouth mass is
Speaker 1: a type of sugar glass, in fact, is the authors
Speaker 1: describe it. They say, really, cotton candy should be thought
Speaker 1: of as a type of fiberglass. It's a fiberglass that
Speaker 1: you can.
Speaker 3: Eat that well, that feels entirely accurate and as appetizing as.
Speaker 1: It should be. This actually leads to something that I
Speaker 1: didn't know about old special effects in the movies. Did
Speaker 1: you know that sugar plays a role in the history
Speaker 1: of breakaway glass on movie sets.
Speaker 3: I have always heard this, but I've never closely examined it,
Speaker 3: you know, but I'd always heard, you know, accounts of like, oh,
Speaker 3: he's going through sugar glass there, or accounts like, well,
Speaker 3: it was supposed to be sugar glass, but they ended
Speaker 3: up using real glass and somebody got injured, that sort
Speaker 3: of thing.
Speaker 1: Oh, okay, So you knew that I didn't know this before,
Speaker 1: or one of those many things. Maybe that if I knew,
Speaker 1: I forgot.
Speaker 3: I didn't know enough about it to ever like cite it,
Speaker 3: because it's one of those things that in the back
Speaker 3: of my mind and I have to think, well, maybe
Speaker 3: I heard that wrong, Maybe they didn't use sugar.
Speaker 1: No, no, you didn't hear it wrong. It's not often
Speaker 1: the case today, but i'll explain. So. When you see
Speaker 1: a movie stunt where somebody gets thrown through a plate
Speaker 1: glass window, or you know, generally glass breaks on a person,
Speaker 1: that is almost always a special prop called break away glass.
Speaker 1: It looks like regular glass when it's solid, looks like
Speaker 1: regular glass made out of silica, but it is not.
Speaker 1: It's some kind of clear, brittle material that shatters on impact,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't form the hard, sharp edges that would
Speaker 1: cut you like regular window glass does. These days, it's
Speaker 1: often made out of some kind of plastic resin, but
Speaker 1: in older movies it was usually made out of sugar.
Speaker 1: And by the way, sugar glass is not just a
Speaker 1: term used in like the breakaway glass thing. I mean
Speaker 1: a lot of the candies people eat are essentially a
Speaker 1: form of sugar glass modified sugar glass, like lollipops, jolly ranchers,
Speaker 1: life savers, et cetera. You can kind of see the
Speaker 1: glassiness when you think of the texture of these things.
Speaker 3: Well, now I just I really want to look up
Speaker 3: some examples from from old movies where someone is like
Speaker 3: one hundred percent going through a window pane made out
Speaker 3: of sugar glass.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like you shatter through it and then you get
Speaker 1: updust yourself off, pick up the pieces and eat them.
Speaker 3: Possibly children and animals form in to consume the precious
Speaker 3: sugar glass.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think they use sugar glass to make the
Speaker 1: methamphetamine on the Breaking Bad set.
Speaker 3: That's right, I do remember reading that.
Speaker 1: But to come back to the chemistry of it, so,
Speaker 1: as we mentioned already, you make sugar glass by boiling
Speaker 1: syrup to the hard crack stage just means taking it
Speaker 1: past three hundred degrees fahrenheit. At this point, the remaining
Speaker 1: mixture is only about two percent water. And the authors
Speaker 1: talk about how sugar actually comes in two primary physical
Speaker 1: arrangements solid sugar. Of course, you have melted forms of sugar,
Speaker 1: but solid sugar is either going to be crystalline sugar
Speaker 1: like rock candy or sugar glass, and that would include
Speaker 1: both jolly ranchers and breakaway glass on movie sets and
Speaker 1: cotton candy. Glasses are interesting from a physics and chemistry
Speaker 1: perspective because they combine properties of a solid and a liquid.
Speaker 1: So they seem solid enough when you look at them
Speaker 1: and touch them, but they actually behave in some ways
Speaker 1: like a liquid. So crystalline solids have these regular patterns
Speaker 1: into which the molecules are arranged. If you look at
Speaker 1: them with a you know, at the molecular level, you
Speaker 1: will see these like long repeating chains. It's a very
Speaker 1: structurally uniform. Glasses, which are called amorphous solids, do not
Speaker 1: show these regular patterns, at least not on the large scale.
Speaker 1: They might have small patterns in little local areas of molecules,
Speaker 1: but they're largely more jumbled up. The molecules are all
Speaker 1: kind of just mixed together and kind of frozen in
Speaker 1: a chaotic mass. So an interesting consequence of the different
Speaker 1: molecular arrangement of glass is that while it might be
Speaker 1: perfectly solid on a normal human timeline, glasses do tend
Speaker 1: to flow in a way that crystalline solids do not.
Speaker 1: And here in the book the author's given illustration of
Speaker 1: this by making reference to something we've talked about on
Speaker 1: the show before, the University of Queensland pitch drop experiment.
Speaker 1: I was trying to remember when this came up. I
Speaker 1: know it won an Igno Bell Prize, so may have
Speaker 1: been in that context, or it may have been some
Speaker 1: other time. We were discussing rheology, which is the scientific
Speaker 1: study of how matter flows. The short version is this
Speaker 1: experiment which began in the nineteen twenties and I think
Speaker 1: is still ongoing, or at least was ongoing until recently.
Speaker 1: I think it might still be going on. It consists
Speaker 1: of leaving a mass of tar pitch which is so
Speaker 1: thick it really seems like a solid, sitting that down
Speaker 1: in a funnel, and then subjecting it to atmospheric conditions,
Speaker 1: and measuring how long it takes for part of it
Speaker 1: to drip out the bottom of the funnel. I think
Speaker 1: the finding was that each drop took roughly eight to
Speaker 1: ten years. Oh wow, So this, you know, chunk of
Speaker 1: tar looks totally solid to us, But in regular atmospheric
Speaker 1: conditions it is flowing. It's just flowing very slowly. And
Speaker 1: other glasses are like that, except flowing even more slowly.
Speaker 1: And here at the author's site a now debunked belief.
Speaker 1: So what I'm about to say is a myth. Do
Speaker 1: not take this away as genuine knowledge, but a now
Speaker 1: debunked belief about stained glass windows in some medieval cathedrals.
Speaker 1: This was based on the observation or the observation people
Speaker 1: thought they had made that some of these window panes
Speaker 1: appear to be thicker at the base than they are
Speaker 1: at the top. And to whatever extent that is true,
Speaker 1: the popular explanation is they're melting. These windows were made
Speaker 1: hundreds of years ago, and you know installed, I don't know.
Speaker 1: So you imagine a cathedrals built in the twelve hundreds,
Speaker 1: and these windows are put in and it's just been
Speaker 1: over hundreds of years. They're gradually flowing down due to
Speaker 1: the force of gravity, and so the bases of them
Speaker 1: are getting thicker than the top. And now the authors
Speaker 1: note that this claim is disputed by experts. I went
Speaker 1: and looked this up, and it seems to me it's
Speaker 1: not just disputed. It from what I can tell, it
Speaker 1: is thoroughly disproven. For example, I found the following paper.
Speaker 1: This is called Viscous Flow of Medieval Cathedral Glass, and
Speaker 1: this is by Osgar Gulbeton, John C. Morrow Zaujug, and
Speaker 1: olus In Boratav published in the American Journal of the
Speaker 1: American Ceramic Society twenty eighteen. Their abstract begins by describing
Speaker 1: the urban legend about the flowing windows, and then notes
Speaker 1: that quote advances in glass transition theory and experimental characterization
Speaker 1: techniques unquote will allow this idea to be tested more
Speaker 1: directly than it ever has before. And then from here
Speaker 1: I'm going to read from the abstract with some abridgments
Speaker 1: for simplicity. Quote. In this work, we investigate the dynamics
Speaker 1: of a typical medieval glass composition used in Sminster Abbey,
Speaker 1: depending on the thermal history of the glass. The room
Speaker 1: temperature viscosity is about sixteen orders of magnitude lower than
Speaker 1: found in a previous study of soda lime silicate glass,
Speaker 1: which is a common type of glass used in making windows.
Speaker 1: But the authors go on later quote despite this significantly
Speaker 1: lower value of the room temperature viscosity, the viscosity of
Speaker 1: the glass is much too high to observe measurable viscous
Speaker 1: flow on a human timescale. Using analytical expressions to describe
Speaker 1: the glass flow over a wall, we calculate a maximum
Speaker 1: flow of about one nanometer over a billion years. So
Speaker 1: just for context, a nanometer is one one billionth of
Speaker 1: a meter, or like you know, two percent as wide
Speaker 1: as some viruses. A sheet of paper is roughly one
Speaker 1: hundred thousand nanometers thick, so if they are flowing like that,
Speaker 1: it would not be enough for us to measure that.
Speaker 1: This would not explain any measurable thickness difference at the
Speaker 1: bottom of the glass.
Speaker 3: Right, you'd need some sort of like crazy time machine slash.
Speaker 3: I don't know alien preservation of a cathedral to be
Speaker 3: in play. It's just impossible to imagine a scenario where
Speaker 3: this would be observable to the naked eye.
Speaker 1: The glass does flow, I mean those windows will be
Speaker 1: melting by the heat death of the universe. They're just
Speaker 1: not going to be flowing in a few hundred years.
Speaker 1: But anyway, this observation relates to a very interesting scientific
Speaker 1: measure that the authors of this book mention. The hurdles
Speaker 1: mention what is called the Deborah number. This is a
Speaker 1: number used in rheology and realogy is the study of
Speaker 1: how matter flows to describe the ratio of two figures.
Speaker 1: One is how quickly a fluid mass flows, or how
Speaker 1: quickly it deforms under pressure, versus how long you are
Speaker 1: able to observe it. And a cool fact is that
Speaker 1: the Deborah number gets its name from a passage in
Speaker 1: the Hebrew Bible. It's in the Book of Judges chapter five,
Speaker 1: which is telling of a song by the prophet Deborah
Speaker 1: in which she's prophesying a great destruction to come, and
Speaker 1: she says, this is the King James version. Lord, when
Speaker 1: thou wentest out of sear, when thou marchest out of
Speaker 1: the field of edom, the earth trembled, and the heavens dropped.
Speaker 1: The clouds also dropped water. The mountains melted from before
Speaker 1: the Lord. And sometimes that line about the mountains melting
Speaker 1: before the Lord is expressed as the mountains flowed before
Speaker 1: the Lord. Some theologians I think this is a later interpretation.
Speaker 1: Some theologians explain this by saying that it's not just
Speaker 1: a simple expression of power i e. God can melt mountains,
Speaker 1: but an expression of God's dominion over time, meaning like
Speaker 1: he lives and sees forever, he is eternal, so to him,
Speaker 1: mountains which are completely solid throughout the lifetime of a human,
Speaker 1: you know, not a noticeable change in a few decades
Speaker 1: to God's point of view, and seeing outside of time,
Speaker 1: they just flow like soft caramel, which would be somewhat
Speaker 1: scientifically accurate. I am not convinced that's what the author
Speaker 1: of this passage actually had in mind. It sounds to
Speaker 1: me more like a classical expression of power and MND
Speaker 1: But interesting nonetheless.
Speaker 3: Oh absolutely, I love it when there's an interpretation of
Speaker 3: ancient writings like this that are not actually pushing some
Speaker 3: sort of an ancient alien technology agenda, but are like,
Speaker 3: you know, it's kind of nice that science matches up
Speaker 3: here in a way that again is not pushing an
Speaker 3: agenda in either direction.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, I'm not trying to slam the passage in anyway.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is a great passage of the Bible.
Speaker 1: That interpretation might be implying a kind of scientific insight
Speaker 1: that the authors of the passage probably did not have,
Speaker 1: But at the very least, it is very interesting coincidence.
Speaker 1: And you know, if the author actually did have that insight,
Speaker 1: that's quite interesting too. But to come back to sugar glass,
Speaker 1: of course, sugar glass is much keener on flowing than
Speaker 1: the soda lime silicon glass that you would be used
Speaker 1: in a stained glass window in a cathedral. Sugar glass
Speaker 1: will flow more easily, and this leads to apparently funny
Speaker 1: considerations in older movie making. So the authors talk about
Speaker 1: how if a prop window of sugar glass was made
Speaker 1: in the morning on an old movie set, the production
Speaker 1: would kind of need to hurry along and shoot the
Speaker 1: window smashing scene soon because the window wouldn't last forever.
Speaker 1: As you might guess if you've ever left Jolly Ranchers
Speaker 1: out in a hot car under the stress of heat
Speaker 1: and moisture conditions in the air, the sugar glass window
Speaker 1: would gradually soften and then eventually begin to melt and
Speaker 1: flow like the mountains before the Lord. Oh wow.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean we've all heard or read examples of
Speaker 3: really hot movie shoots, you know, be it a set
Speaker 3: or some sort of a location. Throw melting sugar glass
Speaker 3: into that scenario. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now here's where we finally get back directly to cotton candy.
Speaker 1: The Heartles claim that cotton candy is probably descended from
Speaker 1: a previously existing confectionery product called spun sugar. Now, spun
Speaker 1: sugar is made by heating sugar syrup to the hard
Speaker 1: crack phase. Remember that's the highest phase. Again. That's how
Speaker 1: you make sugar glass. You take it up to pass
Speaker 1: three hundred degrees fahrenheit, and then you pour that syrup
Speaker 1: over something like a fork or a wisk, which allows
Speaker 1: it to drip and stretch out and form these long,
Speaker 1: thin strands as it cools and hardens. So sometimes people
Speaker 1: I've seen this on like cooking shows before, people will
Speaker 1: make shapes out of spun sugar. You know, They'll like
Speaker 1: pour the threads over the back of a bowl or
Speaker 1: something like that and then peel it off, and then
Speaker 1: you will have this interesting wiry dome of the sugar threads.
Speaker 1: To me, sponge sugar has always kind of looked like
Speaker 1: a thin wire. It's kind of shiny, so it has
Speaker 1: that metallic look to it. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I have encountered this on some desserts as
Speaker 3: a grown up, and yeah, I mean it's it's probably
Speaker 3: the best place to utilize this sugar technology for the
Speaker 3: adult palette, right because it's it's not acting on its own.
Speaker 3: It's just kind of like a little novelty on top
Speaker 3: of something that maybe has a more complex flavor.
Speaker 1: I'm not knocking it, but I think the appeal of
Speaker 1: sponge sugar is more for for looking at than eating.
Speaker 1: I don't know how much fun it really is to
Speaker 1: eat these little wires of sugar syrup.
Speaker 3: But it's nice to know that you can.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. So here the authors talk a bit about
Speaker 1: the history of how cotton candy was invented, like where
Speaker 1: the first machines came from. I think we'll get more
Speaker 1: into that later in maybe in later today or in
Speaker 1: part two of the series, but to begin with, just
Speaker 1: like what is it? Physically? What is it? Cotton candy
Speaker 1: is sort of like spun sugar, but taken to an
Speaker 1: almost spiritual extreme of wispiness. It's usually made with a
Speaker 1: special machine which includes a rapidly rotating disc or tray
Speaker 1: called a spinner, and then in the middle of that
Speaker 1: tray there's a heating element. So you pour the flavored
Speaker 1: sugar into the middle of the spinner with the heating element.
Speaker 1: It gets melted by the heating element, and then this
Speaker 1: in the liquid form. As the thing spins, it leaks
Speaker 1: out of tiny holes in the outside wall of its
Speaker 1: containers spinning container, and these tiny streams of melted sugar
Speaker 1: make contact with the cold, unheated air outside the spinner,
Speaker 1: then quickly solidify into sugar glass, but microscopic hair like
Speaker 1: strands of sugar glass. Then the operator collects all of
Speaker 1: these fibers from a larger kind of container or tray,
Speaker 1: collects them into a cone or onto a stick, and
Speaker 1: here's your cotton candy. Now here's where we come back
Speaker 1: to the comparison to fiberglass. The haartles in the book
Speaker 1: right quote. Fiberglass, first commercialized by the Owen Corning Fiberglass
Speaker 1: Corporation in nineteen thirty eight, is made by extruding molten
Speaker 1: silica glass through small holes to make thin strands or
Speaker 1: fibers of glass. As the strands exit the extruder, they
Speaker 1: cool into the solid glassy state and are collected for
Speaker 1: further processing. The process is essentially the same as for
Speaker 1: making cotton candy, which is just great. Now, of course,
Speaker 1: there are major differences due to the chemical differences between
Speaker 1: silica based glass and sugar glass. Regular fiberglass made out
Speaker 1: of glass glass. Silica glass is used as an insulation
Speaker 1: material in construction. It's quite resistant to heat and moist
Speaker 1: that is one of its main appeals. Cotton candy is
Speaker 1: exactly the opposite. Contact with heat or moisture will destroy
Speaker 1: the structure of cotton candy, So once it's made, it's
Speaker 1: got a short shelf life, or you've got to like
Speaker 1: seal it off against the atmosphere basically like, yeah, you
Speaker 1: need to eat it right away or put it inside
Speaker 1: water type packaging. And the water type packaging is not
Speaker 1: just for protection against the like raccoon washing full dunk scenario.
Speaker 1: Sugar is hygroscopic, meaning it will absorb water from the
Speaker 1: air around it, so you know, usually there's some water
Speaker 1: content in the air. I guess your cotton candy might
Speaker 1: survive longer if you make it in the middle of
Speaker 1: the desert, but to whatever degree it's humid outside, cotton
Speaker 1: candy will quickly go from being fluffy and delightful to
Speaker 1: kind of like collapsing down and becoming a sticky, semi
Speaker 1: melted mess. And then of course if you actually like
Speaker 1: splash water on it or it gets rained on, that's
Speaker 1: just the end of it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, heartbreaking.
Speaker 1: In fact, you can look up I did before we
Speaker 1: started here cotton candy like slow death of cotton candy
Speaker 1: time lapse videos, and these are really good and they
Speaker 1: always have hilarious music because you're just watching joy die.
Speaker 1: You're watching a lump of cotton candy over the course
Speaker 1: of you know, three or four hours just slump down
Speaker 1: and collapse. But the music that's playing sounds like like
Speaker 1: orbital or something. It's very like feel good, upbeat, very upbeat.
Speaker 3: I was surprised by that. I thought it would be
Speaker 3: more like, you know, nine is Nails Hurt or something,
Speaker 3: you know, for the Johnny Cash cover, Yeah, the Johnny
Speaker 3: Cash cover Slow to Cave cotton candy.
Speaker 1: Or the Johnny Cash cover of Rusty Cage, because you know,
Speaker 1: it's like, in a way, it's breaking out of the
Speaker 1: form you have put it in. I'm gonna break my
Speaker 1: Rusty Cage of being an extruded, you know, hair like
Speaker 1: filament of glass, and I'm just going to turn into
Speaker 1: what I've always wanted to be, a thick, sticky like puddle.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the one that I watched at the end, after
Speaker 3: it had shrunken down, they then chopped it up or
Speaker 3: cut it up with scissors, and I don't know why.
Speaker 3: It's so fascinating. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So that's what's going on with the chemistry of
Speaker 1: cotton candy. Much more interesting subject than I expected it
Speaker 1: to be. But there's also a lot of interesting stuff
Speaker 1: about cotton candy and how it interacts with sort of
Speaker 1: the history of confectionery and other related candies and treats
Speaker 1: made in the past.
Speaker 3: That's right now, obviously, I think most of us are
Speaker 3: aware of this. Humans have always had a sweet tooth
Speaker 3: ready to pounce upon such sweet treats that you might
Speaker 3: find in the natural environment as carrots, berries, or perhaps
Speaker 3: even if you're lucky and daring, a taste of wild honey.
Speaker 1: I was wondering, is honey about as sweet as it
Speaker 1: gets in terms of natural products, just things you would
Speaker 1: find in nature, unprocessed or.
Speaker 3: Unreduced pretty much? Yeah, I mean because oftentimes when you
Speaker 3: hear examples of like the sweet tooth of our ancient ancestors,
Speaker 3: you know, they're talking about things like carrots as being
Speaker 3: like extremely sweet, and that's something that in our modern
Speaker 3: sugar saturated world, like we don't even think about carrots
Speaker 3: being sweet, but carrots are sweet. Like, take take a
Speaker 3: little time to appreciate a candy carrot the next time
Speaker 3: you're rooting around in the fridge.
Speaker 1: I recall when I was a kid, there were carrots.
Speaker 1: I think there were like baby carrots, which are not
Speaker 1: actually baby carrots, by the way, they're just different ways
Speaker 1: of cutting a carrot.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're just ugly carrots and carrot leftovers that are
Speaker 3: trimmed down into these little nottes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's the carrot principle of It's kind of like
Speaker 1: tater tots, you know, it's reducing waste. But yeah, carrots.
Speaker 1: I remember some baby carrots when I was a kid
Speaker 1: that were sold under some brand name that was like
Speaker 1: Sugar Treats or something like that. There was just carrots,
Speaker 1: but I think it was a way of tricking kids
Speaker 1: at the stores. Something goes, oh, that's called sugar, yum yum.
Speaker 1: They did taste sweeter somehow. They just got to prime
Speaker 1: your mind.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean that's one of the reasons kids will
Speaker 3: actually eat them most of the time.
Speaker 1: But we're not hating on carrots. But the carrots are great.
Speaker 1: It's great love carrots.
Speaker 3: But there's a lot of evidence for humanity's deep seated
Speaker 3: sweet tooth. The spider caves and what is now Spain
Speaker 3: feature depictions of human honey gathering. Is the believe the
Speaker 3: oldest known depiction of bees and evidence of human conception
Speaker 3: of honey and or the harvesting of honey. I've seen
Speaker 3: different dates for this, including eight thousand BCE and some
Speaker 3: more like six thousand BC, but suffice to say it's
Speaker 3: very ancient evidence, and the practice obviously predates that the depiction.
Speaker 3: Humans were going out and harvesting honey, stealing honey from
Speaker 3: the insects that created now. As we've discussed in the
Speaker 3: show before, the ancient Egyptians made various uses of honey
Speaker 3: medicinal the magical, but they also appreciated it for its
Speaker 3: sweetness and proper sugar based confections go back at least
Speaker 3: to two thousand BCE in India according to Sanskrit texts,
Speaker 3: though I've also seen the date of refined sugar in
Speaker 3: India going back to six thousand BCE, and the English
Speaker 3: words sugar and candy are both distantly related to their
Speaker 3: original Sanskrit terms. As such, there is of course a
Speaker 3: very deep rooted sweets culture in India, and I don't
Speaker 3: have a lot of expertise in it, but I have
Speaker 3: been to Indian sweet shops before as an adult, so
Speaker 3: I was I've almost I've never been in the market
Speaker 3: for the sweets they have. I'm usually buying something like
Speaker 3: Somosa's or something. But as such, there is of course
Speaker 3: a robust world of Indian sweets out there. It's a
Speaker 3: very deep sweet culture, one that I sadly did not
Speaker 3: have access to as a child. When I would have
Speaker 3: most appreciated all of this, I only had Indian food
Speaker 3: basically once I was at least in college, I think.
Speaker 3: So when I go into Indian sweet shops, I'm impressed
Speaker 3: by all the colors and shapes, but I just don't
Speaker 3: have the appetite for it. I don't know if there
Speaker 3: are any listeners out there who have definite recommendations about
Speaker 3: what I should try at the local Indian sweet shops.
Speaker 3: Let me know, and I will go out and I
Speaker 3: will conduct the experiment. Now, when it comes to European
Speaker 3: traditions of sweets, sugar based confections emerged during the Middle
Speaker 3: Ages as luxury goods brought in initially via a pothecaris
Speaker 3: in the Middle East, but in other parts of the world,
Speaker 3: as we've been discussing places where sugarcane grew naturally, talking
Speaker 3: about South Asia, Southeast Asia, and potentially New Guinea, or
Speaker 3: of course lands adjacent to those lands, places where candy
Speaker 3: culture could either emerge or easily flow into. In those cases,
Speaker 3: we see more deeply rooted sugar cultures. Deeply rooted sweet cultures,
Speaker 3: such as in India now fast forwarding to cotton candy.
Speaker 3: Just to put all that in perspective, we're going to
Speaker 3: get more into the origin story of cotton candy. But again, generally,
Speaker 3: the generally accepted invention story for cotton candy proper is
Speaker 3: that it is unleashed upon the world at the nineteen
Speaker 3: oh four World's Fair, an invention by a pair of Tennesseeans,
Speaker 3: dentist William Morrison and a confectioner by the name of
Speaker 3: John C. Wharton, both Nashville based.
Speaker 1: I believe dentists creating cotton candy.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, that is a frequently spouted fact that never
Speaker 3: stops being hilarious, because again it is just essentially peershe There.
Speaker 3: Of course, some other contemporary rivals for the invention honors here,
Speaker 3: as is often the case with inventions from the nineteenth
Speaker 3: or twentieth century, as we've discussed before in our invention episodes,
Speaker 3: but people point to Morrison and or Alton there when
Speaker 3: it comes to the invention of proper cotton candy. There
Speaker 3: are also some additional arguments for nineteenth or even fifteenth
Speaker 3: century CE European origins for cotton candy or things adjacent
Speaker 3: to cotton candy. One of the more fascinating arguments that
Speaker 3: I ran across was that was that cotton candy or
Speaker 3: something similar to it dates back to China's Han dynasty,
Speaker 3: which would place it somewhere between two two BCE and
Speaker 3: nine CE, or between twenty five and two twenty CE,
Speaker 3: depending on where in the Han dynasty you're falling. Okay,
Speaker 3: so in this we're talking about long she Tongue or
Speaker 3: dragons Beard candy, sometimes abbreviated in Western circles as d
Speaker 3: b C. I've not personally had Dragon's Beard candy. It's
Speaker 3: possible that I've had the chance and just didn't recognize
Speaker 3: my opportunity or just wasn't looking for something. I think
Speaker 3: that's ultimately the tragedy of being exposed to different sweet cultures.
Speaker 3: As you grow older, you just have less of an
Speaker 3: appetite for it, but it's still it's very interesting looking.
Speaker 3: You can easily look up various YouTube videos of Dragon's
Speaker 3: Beard candy, and I've also seen places where you can
Speaker 3: apparently buy it online, you know, where it's like shrink
Speaker 3: wrapped or something. The same is true of some Middle
Speaker 3: Eastern examples that will refer to of similar treats, such
Speaker 3: as Middle Eastern floss halva, which sometimes has the flossy
Speaker 3: hairlike consistency that we're talking about, But I've also seen
Speaker 3: images of it that look like they're a bit more solid,
Speaker 3: but in that kind of reminds me of these examples
Speaker 3: that we're just talking about of like what happens when
Speaker 3: you take cotton candy, allow it to sit, and then
Speaker 3: you cut it up. So maybe it's a case like
Speaker 3: that where you have different versions of what the is
Speaker 3: ultimately going on to the tray in the confectionary. But
Speaker 3: flasava also looks quite good. I would definitely accept some
Speaker 3: of this from Tilda Swinton in a sleigh if she
Speaker 3: was offering this Turkish delight. So I was reading a
Speaker 3: bit more about Dragon's Beard candy. I found a really
Speaker 3: nice Eater travel article by Tiffany Lee from twenty twenty
Speaker 3: four titled Welcome the Year of the Dragon with Dragon's
Speaker 3: Beard Candy if you can find it by the way,
Speaker 3: Happy Lunar New Year, as we have now entered into
Speaker 3: the Year of the wood Snake.
Speaker 1: Now refresh my memory. Rob woodsnake means that like you
Speaker 1: get a year of a specific animal, like Year of
Speaker 1: the Dragon, Year of the pig. This is a year
Speaker 1: of the snake, but also the animal is under the
Speaker 1: influence of a certain planet, and so that would mean
Speaker 1: that's the wood aspect. Is that right?
Speaker 3: Right? There are different elemental factors that come into play,
Speaker 3: so you know it might be like iron snake, water snake,
Speaker 3: wood snake. This year is the wood snake.
Speaker 1: I like wood snake. It's very earthy. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So the author here Lee, herself born to immigrant parents
Speaker 3: from Hong Kong, describes childhood memories of buying the treat
Speaker 3: from a food stall in Toronto, and she describes the
Speaker 3: candy as follows. I thought this was a nice description quote.
Speaker 3: The candies stretched sugar strands wrapped around a crunchy core
Speaker 3: of peanuts, coconut and sesame seeds create a series of
Speaker 3: textual sensations on the tongue. Some strands dissolve into a
Speaker 3: soft mass, while others shatter into foyatine flakes before the
Speaker 3: whole thing morphs into a chewy, crunchy jumble of nougat. Foyatine.
Speaker 3: By the way, that is, I had to look this
Speaker 3: up and it was not familiar with it as a
Speaker 3: crunchy French confection made from thin sweetened crapes. I've never
Speaker 3: had this one either, but you know, I get the idea.
Speaker 1: Is the foy part of foyotine? Does that share a
Speaker 1: root with like, oh, I don't know how to pronounce
Speaker 1: this meal foy or whatever? The thousand layers thing?
Speaker 3: Ooh, that sounds likely is one of those layers crunchy.
Speaker 3: I guess it would have to be.
Speaker 1: I think they're I think they're all crunchy, aren't they.
Speaker 1: I think a bunch of it's like tons and tons
Speaker 1: of crunchy layers. I think it means it means like
Speaker 1: a thousand layers or a thousand sheets or something. Oh, okay, yes,
Speaker 1: like im I l L E f e U I l.
Speaker 3: L E okay, So a thousand sheets that all have
Speaker 3: the same experience. I was thinking like each sheet would
Speaker 3: have a different consistency and that that would be impossible
Speaker 3: to pull off. So anyway, we have pretty complex confection
Speaker 3: here in dragon Beard candy with sugar floss wrapped around
Speaker 3: a nutty center. If it sounds less sweet because of
Speaker 3: the nuttiness, well, Lee assures us that it's plenty sweet.
Speaker 3: You'll most likely find it in places where traditional Chinese
Speaker 3: sweets are sold. I am not sure if I have
Speaker 3: a local source for it here in Atlanta or and
Speaker 3: I'm going to just have to look for it the
Speaker 3: next time I'm in a bigger city. Listeners, do send
Speaker 3: your recommendations if you have had this and know where
Speaker 3: it is sold. But based on Lee's article, it sounds
Speaker 3: like it hasn't completely caught on in the West, despite
Speaker 3: occasional spikes and popularity as a fad, like I believe,
Speaker 3: she mentions, like in New York at one point it
Speaker 3: became popular for a little bit, but then people became
Speaker 3: distracted by something else, and it hasn't really become entrenched
Speaker 3: in the way that other imported suites have. Okay, And
Speaker 3: as she discusses, it's pretty labor and skill intensive, so
Speaker 3: that's another hurdle for it really taking over. According to Lee,
Speaker 3: it takes two years of mentorship to learn to make it,
Speaker 3: and it's one of those things like hand pulled noodles,
Speaker 3: where half the appeal is watching someone make it. And
Speaker 3: I guess that holds true of Western cotton candy as well,
Speaker 3: like you want to watch the cotton candy man stick
Speaker 3: that cone or tube into the little cauldron stirred around
Speaker 3: and emerge with that big puff of blue sugar.
Speaker 1: There's a kind of pleasure in watching the cotton candy
Speaker 1: made that's similar to how people watch those videos of
Speaker 1: things being cleaned, like people watching videos of a dirty
Speaker 1: carpet being hosed out, or of people dusting and stuff.
Speaker 1: There's something similar going on in the way the wisps
Speaker 1: are collected.
Speaker 3: Yes, it is like a spell is being cast of
Speaker 3: dragon's beard. Candy Lee writes. Quote. Classic recipes require chefs
Speaker 3: to heat granulated sugar and maltose together with extracting precision,
Speaker 3: shape them into a molten puck and expand that puck
Speaker 3: into a lasso. Then, with deft fingers and the aid
Speaker 3: of rice flour, they stretch, pull, and fold the sugar
Speaker 3: onto itself into a figure eight until silky Vermicelli like
Speaker 3: strands appear, before wrapping the threads around the filling. And
Speaker 3: you have to get the required temperatures exactly right, which
Speaker 3: makes sense matching up with what we were talking about earlier,
Speaker 3: with the temperature precision involved in any of these various
Speaker 3: stages of heating sugars and syrups, and you have to
Speaker 3: be prepared to make adjustments depending on ambient temperature as well,
Speaker 3: especially in the case of like open carts where someone
Speaker 3: might be making this candy. Oh yeah, and then you
Speaker 3: really need to eat them the day off. Much like
Speaker 3: cotton candy. It's like, you want it fresh. If it
Speaker 3: sits around, it's not gonna hold its form. I'm assuming
Speaker 3: the prepackaged sorts that you can buy on the internet.
Speaker 3: It's bright, and obviously it's not gonna be the same experience,
Speaker 3: but maybe they're able to keep it from drying out
Speaker 3: with some air tight packaging, you know, And I guess
Speaker 3: it's better than nothing if you don't have access to
Speaker 3: fresh I was.
Speaker 1: Having trouble picturing the full finished product, so I looked
Speaker 1: it up and it looks like it. You know. It's
Speaker 1: often made into kind of a dumpling form or it's
Speaker 1: like a hot pocket, but with the pastry replaced with
Speaker 1: these these white white sugar threads, and then the interior
Speaker 1: filling being the nut coconut mixture you mentioned earlier.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, Now getting back to the history of this
Speaker 3: sugary treat, Lee does cite a popular legend that Dragon's
Speaker 3: Beard candy was an imperial treat dating back to the
Speaker 3: Han dynasty, with the emperor himself giving it its name
Speaker 3: since the white strands reminded him of dragon's whiskers. You'll
Speaker 3: also find this mentioned on the Wikipedia entry for dragons
Speaker 3: Beard candy, though the citations there don't really go anywhere active.
Speaker 3: As far as I could tell, rumors rumors bound. So
Speaker 3: on one hand, I think the dragons whiskers description is perfect.
Speaker 3: To compare it to a Western movie, think of the
Speaker 3: luck dragon from the Never Ending Story Falcore. Okay, it's
Speaker 3: like if you had a segment of Falcre and you
Speaker 3: like sliced into them, and yeah, you would have like
Speaker 3: the nougat like center with the nuts and the coconut
Speaker 3: and all, and then the white fur on the outside.
Speaker 1: Shave of Fulcore. Wrap it around, wrap the trimmings around
Speaker 1: some nuts. There you go.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So, in past episodes on inventions, we've discussed the
Speaker 3: questionable historical accuracy of anything that is attributed to an emperor,
Speaker 3: Chinese or otherwise in terms of its invention. Sometimes the
Speaker 3: guy the top gets to take all the credit and
Speaker 3: a lot of legends there, yeah, a lot of legends.
Speaker 3: And while it's the naming here and not the invention
Speaker 3: itself that is attributed to a hunt emperor. I think
Speaker 3: we might exercise similar caution. But the more interesting question
Speaker 3: here is really whether there is any indication that this
Speaker 3: desert item or something much like it, actually dates back
Speaker 3: to the year two twenty CE or much earlier. Okay,
Speaker 3: So I turned to a couple of other sources on this.
Speaker 3: About the history of sweets and sugar in general, it's
Speaker 3: pointed out by Tim Richardson in Sweets a history of candy.
Speaker 3: Sugarcane was introduced into China early in the first millennium BCE,
Speaker 3: but that, unlike with India, it didn't develop. China didn't
Speaker 3: develop a sugar based sweet culture and arguably never really did,
Speaker 3: at least not on the scale comparable to the robust
Speaker 3: tradition of sweets that you find on the Indian subcontinent.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, Maltos.
Speaker 3: Which I mentioned earlier, remained the sweetener of choice in China.
Speaker 3: This is a jelly extracted from grains and sorghum reeds.
Speaker 3: Honey was also used, and they long remained dependent on
Speaker 3: imported sugar from India and Indo China for anything that
Speaker 3: actually called for sugar or some mix of sugar and
Speaker 3: these other sweeteners and Richardson rides that this was likely
Speaker 3: due to technological difficulties with sugar refinement and or just
Speaker 3: lack of demand for it, okay, which makes sense. It's like,
Speaker 3: it's one thing to acquire the secrets of sugar refining,
Speaker 3: but then is there a need for it? Do people
Speaker 3: actually want it? As is it anything other than a
Speaker 3: novelty for the court. And if it is just a
Speaker 3: novelty for the court, maybe you just keep importing it, right, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: And so Richardson says it wasn't till six forty seven
Speaker 3: CE that the emperor at the time, and I believe
Speaker 3: this would be Tongu Tai Zong sent delegates to India
Speaker 3: to learn the secrets of sugar refinery, and from then
Speaker 3: on there are various Chinese advancements in the sugar industry.
Speaker 3: In twelve eighty, Ridges And points out that Kubla Khan
Speaker 3: brought in Egyptian experts to share the secrets of white sugar, which,
Speaker 3: you know, if you're going to have a stately pleasure dome,
Speaker 3: got to have that white sugar.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Just did he have cotton candy in the pleasure dome?
Speaker 3: I mean it's the perfect place for it. Right, I
Speaker 3: can imagine Kubla Khan with some sort of cotton candy
Speaker 3: in each hand.
Speaker 1: Though you know what happens when you get it. Wet
Speaker 1: goes down through the caverns, measureless, demand less. See nice.
Speaker 3: Another book, I Was Looking at Sweets and Candy, A
Speaker 3: Global History by Laura Mason, discusses Dragon's Beard candy briefly
Speaker 3: within the larger context of pulled sugar sweet that is,
Speaker 3: again syrup boiled to a crack and while malleable, worked
Speaker 3: into desired forms and literally pulled by hands and or
Speaker 3: hooks to create ropes and threads. She defines this process
Speaker 3: as ancient but also not necessarily well recorded. She mentions
Speaker 3: that the pulling of these confections was probably or perhaps
Speaker 3: originally thought to quote convey special qualities, and I believe
Speaker 3: these special qualities are linked to the rarity of sugar
Speaker 3: in some of the places where this would have been conducted,
Speaker 3: and also the seeming alchemy of working it into these shapes,
Speaker 3: sometimes shapes that themselves might convey special meanings, such as
Speaker 3: rings and circles. But also yet, just coming back to
Speaker 3: the modern example of cotton candy, watching its creation does
Speaker 3: feel like a kind of magic, and we can imagine
Speaker 3: easily imagine our ancestors and parts around the world engaging
Speaker 3: in a similar fascination.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean this takes back to something we talked
Speaker 1: about at the beginning of the chemistry section, which is
Speaker 1: like the minute attention before modern thermometer is that would
Speaker 1: allow you to, you know, to just easily judge exactly
Speaker 1: how hot your boiled syrup mixture is getting, like the
Speaker 1: attention and know how required to get it to just
Speaker 1: the right temperature to have the properties you want.
Speaker 3: Yeah. She stresses that broadly. With pulled sugar confections, colors
Speaker 3: can be added, and I don't think I was fully
Speaker 3: aware of this, but this is where the basics of
Speaker 3: the candy cane come into play. Traditionally, candy cane is
Speaker 3: apparently more of a pulled sugar confection, but not necessarily
Speaker 3: in its modern mass manufactured version. And then there are
Speaker 3: various pulled candy traditions and pretty much every culture to
Speaker 3: sort of catch the pulled sugar bug as it traveled
Speaker 3: out of sugar rich lands into other realms. She of
Speaker 3: course highlights pulled Turkish keton halva, also known as piecemagna,
Speaker 3: noting the addition of butter and flour in that process.
Speaker 3: She stresses that Keaton halva is different from cotton candy, though,
Speaker 3: and that there's no true Western equivalent. As cotton candy,
Speaker 3: she writes, is coarse and gritty. I don't remember if
Speaker 3: that's accurate, but it sounds right. I do vaguely recall
Speaker 3: sort of a grittiness to it, but at least right
Speaker 3: before it melts well, keats and hav is smooth or soft.
Speaker 3: But of course, pulled sugar in the West also connects
Speaker 3: into traditions of pulled tathy the example many listeners may
Speaker 3: be familiar with, and you know, generally you have like
Speaker 3: some sort of machine with hooks for that. And Dragon's
Speaker 3: Beard candy, she writes, is closer to Keithon halva and
Speaker 3: related confections, and accounts of Keaton halve date back at
Speaker 3: least as far as the early fifteenth century CE. As
Speaker 3: for the earliest possible origin of Dragon's Beard candy, she
Speaker 3: does write that a Chinese confectionery tradition probably developed from
Speaker 3: around the seventh century CE, when sugar began to replace
Speaker 3: honey in sweetcakes. In Chinese culinary traditions, sugar based items though,
Speaker 3: would have been only for the aristocracy, and it would
Speaker 3: remain that way for centuries. So it would seem possible
Speaker 3: that some form of pulled sugar treat, even something close
Speaker 3: to what we know of as dragon's beard candy today,
Speaker 3: was brought before a Han Chinese emperor. It seems like
Speaker 3: it's possible. But it also seems possible that this treat
Speaker 3: might have developed later, during at least the seventh century
Speaker 3: rather than the third century seee. I wish there were
Speaker 3: firmer sources on the Han dynasty legend here, but I
Speaker 3: at least couldn't find them in English. So if anyone
Speaker 3: out there has access to additional data on this legend,
Speaker 3: I would love.
Speaker 1: To hear about it totally. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Also, I mean, as we've been discussing here, like sugar
Speaker 3: and treats, they do seem to travel reasonably easy from
Speaker 3: one culture to another, so you'll often find different versions
Speaker 3: of cotton candy or or dragon's beard candy or something
Speaker 3: like this in various other cultures. Like there there's like
Speaker 3: a Korean version of of a poll sugar tree. There's
Speaker 3: a Persian variant of halva that is called Pashmak. There's
Speaker 3: an Indian variant. It's called a belief sown pop D.
Speaker 3: So you know, there are probably endless variations across time
Speaker 3: and space.
Speaker 1: But also speaking of time and space, I mean I
Speaker 1: think about how when you get into these really delicate
Speaker 1: versions of sponge sugar, they become increasingly sensitive to atmospheric conditions,
Speaker 1: which may limit their ability to certainly their ability to
Speaker 1: travel as finished products. You know, you would have trouble
Speaker 1: like making a confection like this and then having it
Speaker 1: survive a I don't know, a trip to market or
Speaker 1: something like that, so much like they're made at the
Speaker 1: fair these days. It's something that in most conditions would
Speaker 1: probably need to be eaten immediately, but maybe in some
Speaker 1: way conditions I don't know, like a cold, dry place
Speaker 1: or something, it could survive longer.
Speaker 3: It definitely seems the case where if word of this
Speaker 3: treat traveled to your emperor, you would have to quickly realize, well,
Speaker 3: I just can't tell the emperor about this. I have
Speaker 3: to bring someone with their supplies and their tools in
Speaker 3: order to make this for the emperor.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, you can't like make it ahead and bring
Speaker 1: it to that. You've got to make it there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and again as the sources noted, there's a lot
Speaker 3: that's been lost to history. Sugary treats are not always
Speaker 3: the things that are talked about in the surviving histories.
Speaker 3: All right, we're going to go ahead and close this
Speaker 3: episode out, but we're going to come back for at
Speaker 3: least a part two on cotton candy because there's more
Speaker 3: to discuss. I think we're probably going to get into
Speaker 3: the twentieth century origins of modern cotton candy a bit,
Speaker 3: and then there are also going to be some offshoots,
Speaker 3: things that are maybe cotton candy and name only but
Speaker 3: are still pretty fascinating from other disciplines of the science world.
Speaker 1: Can't wait.
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