Old Fashion Candy Classics
May 17, 2012 6:40 AM Subscribe
[M]odern hard candies, as we know them today, were first produced in the 17th century.
I'm guessing the only reason it took that long was because it was around then that refined sugar started to become available in commercial quantities. That site suggests that a mass-produced candy something very much like these was popular in the early nineteenth-century, but it doesn't seem that the person selling them made any claim to having invented them. They're a traditional food.
All the things really are is boiled sugar striped with red coloring and flavored with peppermint. I get the impression people have been making these, both at home and commercially, for centuries. The specific inventor is probably just as obscure as the person who invented bread.
posted by valkyryn at 6:51 AM on May 17, 2012
I'm guessing the only reason it took that long was because it was around then that refined sugar started to become available in commercial quantities. That site suggests that a mass-produced candy something very much like these was popular in the early nineteenth-century, but it doesn't seem that the person selling them made any claim to having invented them. They're a traditional food.
All the things really are is boiled sugar striped with red coloring and flavored with peppermint. I get the impression people have been making these, both at home and commercially, for centuries. The specific inventor is probably just as obscure as the person who invented bread.
posted by valkyryn at 6:51 AM on May 17, 2012
FWIW, I emailed Farley & Sather's, the owners of the Brach's brand, and got this response:
Unfortunately, we do not have any information dating back to this since we have only owned Brach's since 2007.
That's...not helpful at all.
posted by jenny76 at 3:30 PM on May 17, 2012
Unfortunately, we do not have any information dating back to this since we have only owned Brach's since 2007.
That's...not helpful at all.
posted by jenny76 at 3:30 PM on May 17, 2012
They're in this Brach's advertorial in a 1957 LIFE. Indications are that in the 1990s, anyway, it was the best-selling hard candy in the US, and "paid the bills around here" [at Brach's]. This candy site says they've "been around so long nobody knows when they were invented". It does appear that in one form or another the confection has been around a long time.
It does seem to me that the candy is a variant of the candy cane, which has a more closely observed origin. Intriguingly, the mass manufacture seems to trace to Chicago, also the location of Brach's. There may have simply been a German cultural preference that led to this.
posted by dhartung at 12:23 AM on May 18, 2012 [1 favorite]
It does seem to me that the candy is a variant of the candy cane, which has a more closely observed origin. Intriguingly, the mass manufacture seems to trace to Chicago, also the location of Brach's. There may have simply been a German cultural preference that led to this.
posted by dhartung at 12:23 AM on May 18, 2012 [1 favorite]
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posted by jedicus at 6:51 AM on May 17, 2012