The earliest-known instructions for making spun sugar (now referred to as cotton candy, candy floss, or fairy floss) appear in the 1769 book The Experienced English Housekeeper. It instructs aspiring experienced English housekeepers to:
Take a quarter of a pound of treble-refined sugar in one lump, and set it before a moderate fire on the middle of a silver salver or pewter plate. [ . . . ] Set it a little aslant, and when it begins to run like clear water to the edge of the plate or salver, have ready a tin cover or china bowl set on a still, with the mouth downward close to your sugar that it may not cool by carrying too far.
Then take a clean knife and take up as much of the syrup as the point will hold, and a fine thread will come from the point, which you must draw as quickly as possible backward and forward and also around the mold [and repeating this process] till your sugar is done or your web is thick enough]
This tricky process was made significantly easier with the invention of the first cotton candy machine, which was granted a US patent in 1899. Before that, spun sugar was used primarily for presentation of food rather than as a stand-alone treat. It was only with the invention of the machine that cotton candy became “fair food.”
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