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Buckeye Candy
"Buckeye. A peanut-buttter-and-chocolate candy made in little balls resembling buckeye nuts. The term is dated in print by the Dictionary of American Regional English to 1970, which describes it as "Cheap candy that used to be sold years ago." But according to Marcia Adams in Heartland (1991), "If Ohio were to declare a state candy, this recipe would be it...Some cooks like to leave a bit of peanut butter ball exposed when dipping in the chocolate so it more closely resembles a real buckeye."
---The Encyclopedia of American Food & Drink, John F. Mariani [Lebhar-Friedman:New York] 1999 (p. 45)
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Taffy
The history of taffy (and its British counterpart, toffee), and butterscotch are intertwined. When were these confections invented? No one quite knows for certain. Food historians generally agree that taffy/toffee first became popular in the 1800s. The first recipes were somewhat different from the product we know today, in that they did not involved "pulling." The basic ingredients for taffy/ toffee were readily available to European cooks during the Roman occupation. Treacle (a uncrystalized syrup produced dring sugar refining) was routinely employed to make cakes and gingerbread during the Middle Ages. Karen Hess notes treacle was considered to have medicinal value, which explains why it became the sweetener of choice during these times. (Martha Washington's Booke of Cookery, transcribed by Karen Hess [p. 200-1]). C. Anne Wilson confirms "Molasses was rather slow in coming into general use as a sweetener, due perhaps to the influence of the apothecaries and treaclemongers." (Food and Drink in Britain From the Stone Age to the 19th Century [p.304]). Northern European cooks typically used butter [rather than oil] for cooking because it was readily available.
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Chocolate
Until the 16th century, no European had ever heard of the popular drink from the Central and South American peoples. It was not until the Spanish conquest of the Aztecs that chocolate could be imported to Europe, where it quickly became a court favorite. To keep up with the high demand for this new drink, Spanish armies began enslaving Mesoamericans to produce cacao. Even with cacao harvesting becoming a regular business, only royalty and the well-connected could afford to drink this expensive import. Before long, the Spanish began growing cacao beans on plantations, and using an African workforce to help manage them. The situation was different in England. Put simply, anyone with money could buy it. The first chocolate house opened in London in 1657. In 1689, noted physician and collector Hans Sloane developed a milk chocolate drink in Jamaica which was initially used by apothecaries, but later sold to the Cadbury brothers.
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Chocolate Truffles
"Many who have never encountered vegetable truffles have tucked into confectioners' truffles, sweets the colour and shape of black truffles, made from a mixture of chocolate, sugar, and cream (and often rum) and covered with a dusting of cocoa powder or tiny chocolate strands. These are, of course, a much more recent phenomenon; they made their first appearance in an Army and Navy Stores catalogue for 1926-7."
---An A-Z of Food and Drink, John Ayto [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 2002 (p. 351)
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English_Toffee
"Toffee became popular around 1800, a time when sugar and treacle (a sugar syrup like molasses) had become cheap. Early references to toffee all come from the north of England and often mention friends getting together to boil treacle with flour to make a sticky treat. Improvements to the basic mixture included adding cream a speciality of Devonshire or butter to make a richly flavoured confection. Buttery toffee is often called butterscotch, which suggests it was invented in Scotland. But the word was first recorded in the Yorkshire town of Doncaster, where Samuel Parkinson began making it in 1817. Possibly the "scotch" part of its name derives from "scorch" rather than from Scotland. As for the word "toffee," an early spelling is "toughy" or "tuffy," probably a reference to the confection's teeth-sticking toughness."
---"ENGLISH TOFFEE Sweet, rich, and beloved by the British," British Heritage, February-March 2002 (p. 16)
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Jelly Beans
"Jelly beans are a combination of the Middle Eastern fruit-gum candy Turkish Delight and the seventeenth-century method of coating Jordan almonds. The production of jelly beans has changed little since the candy was first developed in the late nineteenth century...The date of the introduction of the jelly bean is in dispute, but the earliest known published mention of the candy was October 2, 1898, in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. By the turn of the century, jelly beans were popular, selling for nine to twelve cents per pound, and by the 1930s they had become associated with Easter."
---Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, Andrew F. Smith editor [Oxford University Press:New York] 2004, Volume 1 (p. 182)
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Conversation Hearts
"Kissing comfits , as detailed by Robert May in 1685, were sugar paste containg musk, civet, ambergris, and orris powder. These were printed in moulds or rolled into little pellets and then squeezed flat with a seal...The combination of sugar and mottoes continued, Hannah Glasse gave instructions 'to make little things of sugar, with devices in them. These were made from the pieces of sugar paste, tinted whatever colour was preferred, 'in what shapes you like...in the middle of them have little pieces of paper, with some pretty smart sentences wrote on them; they will in company make much mirth.' But the writing migrated from paper to the sweet itself with the Victorian fashion for 'conversation lozenges'. Those who were tongue-tied could always offer their companion a little piece of sugar paste printed with some suitable inscription. 'How do you flirt?' "Can you polka?' and 'Love me' were amongst those available from Terry's in York; for those wanting to make a really positive response, a large medallion moulded with a heart and the words 'I will' was available. Another novelty was reminiscent of Hannah Glasse's little things with devices in them. As advertised by the firm of Thomas Handisyde in the East End of London, these were 'Handisydes Secret Charms suck carefully and the secret message will appear'. Handisyde produced various shapes and sizes of conversation lozenges, the larger ones cut in hearts, circles, and elegant oblongs with ogee edges. The temperance movement used the idea of motto lozenges to promote their message. 'Drink is the ruin of man'...The inscriptions were added to the sweets by printing the tops with stamps dipped in dyes."
---Sugar Plums and Sherbet: The Preshistory of Sweets, Laura Mason [Prospect Books:Devon] 2004 (p. 146-147)
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Liquorice
"Liquorice...is the pungent root of a small European plant of the pea family. It was used as a flavouring in ancient times...and has been known in Britain since at least the early thirteenth century, introduced via Spain from the Arabs. In medieval times and up until the seventeenth century it was commonly used, either whole or ground up, for flavouring cakes, puddings, drinks, etc...Nowadays, however, it is far more familiar in the form of a black sweet, made from the evaporated juice of the liquoice root. Earliest examples of this include the pontefract cake, a small disc-shaped pastille of liquorice, but over the past 60 or 70 years a far more varied repertoire of liquorice sweets has emerged, including the liquorice bootlace...[and] liquorice allsorts."
---An A-Z of Food and Drink, John Ayto [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 2002 (p. 191-2)
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Peanut Brittle
"Brittle is a simple and ancient sweet, and has been made for centuries in many countries. It is very similar to some types of nougat made with honey and nuts only (no egg white). Two examples are the Provencal 'croquant' made with sugar, honey, and almonds; and Italian 'croccante' with sugar, sometimes a little butter (which makes it less hard), and almonds. Similar confections of nuts, especially pistachios, almonds, and cashews, or sesame seeds, are popular in parts of the Arabic speaking world. Versions of nut and sesame seed brittle are to be found in many parts of Asia...peanut brittle is a popular sweet in North America."
---Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 1999 (p. 107)
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Marshmallows
Modern marshmallow confections were first made in France around 1850. This first method of manufacture was expensive and slow because it involved the casting and molding of each marshmallow. French candy makers used the mallow root sap as a binding agent for the egg whites, corn syrup, and water. The fluffy mixture was heated and poured into the corn starch in small molds, forming the marshmallows. At this time, marshmallows were still not mass manufactured. Instead, they were made by confectioners in small stores or candy companies.
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Pop Rocks
" One of the great challenges of modern industry has been the problem of soda pop. Most of it is water, which means that most of the money spent to transport the stuff from bottling joint to store has been spent to transport water. How much nicer if the pop and its bubbles could be powdered. General Foods' efforts to solve the problem of powdered pop have led to the already legendary Pop Rocks and Space Dust candies, wich are still being test marketed, and black-marketed by kids where they aren't available. The candies fizz, releasing carbonation in the mouth or in the hand when they come in contact with moisture. While General Foods wrestles with the problem, Eugene Dana, president of Nellson Candies, is testing his solution, Advertising Age reported. His Carb-O-Nated powdered mix cones come in cherry, lemon-lime, grape, and orange. It is being tested in Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Texas. Six packets, each of which makes a 10-ounce drink, retail for 99 cents, one cent an ounce chaper than buying a name brand six pack of canned soda pop in Chicago. No cola yet, but give them time."
---"News for you: Powdered soda pop." Chicago Tribune, August 22, 1977 (p. B1)
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