106: Civil War Candy

Speaker 0 00:03 Welcome to brain junk. I'm Amy Barton and I'm trace Kerr and it's time for a brainstorm. So the civil war, 1861 to 1865 not super great, not super great soldiers were getting rations with sugar, but then they were also getting candy. So I want to talk about two different kinds of candy though. Necco wafer and the jelly beans. Oh, I look forward to this. Yes. So Oliver P chase in 1847, he immigrated to the United States from England and he began making Necco wafers. So that's a long, that's, that's a very old candy company. It was a very old candy campy. And according to the New York times, they were the first commercial machine made candy in the United States. He brought these lozenge making machines and then he was mixing, it was a button machine now and they were mixing sugar and gelatin and flavoring and pressing out. And if you don't know Necco wafers are these hard like quarter sized, the disc shaped candy, shocked, like dry candy. Speaker 0 01:10 Um, that came in various flavors. Well, Oliver chase sided with the union during the civil war and they were sending Necco wafers to the soldiers because they were hard. They wouldn't melt. Yeah. Not so perishable. Yeah. Well not to be out done in 1861 Boston confectioner William Schrafft's is said to have urged people to send a jelly beans to soldiers. Those seem more complicated to make. Well, they're super complicated to make. So I kind of fell down this jelly bean history construction thing cause it's gooey on the inside and then it kind of has a hard shell. Well it's thought that jelly beans are the lovechild of Turkish delight and Jordan almonds. I can see that. Cause you got Turkish delight, which is this gooey candy. And then the Jordan almond, they figured out how to coat the outside of this almond again and again and again with these layers of sugar to give it that hard shell. Speaker 0 02:01 Well I kind of followed along the trail of jelly bean. Yes. Because William shraff, he was making them, but jelly beans weren't advertised until they were in the Chicago daily news. July 5th, 1905 world's fair era. Right, the advertised as bulk beans, 9 cents per pound. Ooh. So you can get a lot for a good price. You totally could. How many flavors they started with, you know, I tried to find like original jelly bean flavors and yeah, there was not a lot of information, you know, it was cinnamon or clove or like a cherry flavor. Think of any kind of medicinal flavor because most candy before the civil war was like a lozenge or this kind of thing. I even found a candy that was a lozenge and it had chocolate and it also had marijuana in it. And the advertisement was like very relaxing. Refreshing Andrew. That's exactly right. Great for men, women and yeah. Speaker 0 03:01 Yes. Mommy has one. Children have two. Everybody kind of just chills around the table. Yeah. Awesome. So good. So if you ever get a chance to go to the jelly belly factory in California, definitely do it. I kind of want to go back again and you could dress a new civil war years, so yeah, have a, a reenactor moments. There you go. I'm going to be very authentic. Not at all. Pardon me, ma'am? Do you have clove jellybeans? I would love that. Take pictures. Do a little video if you do that, please. Yes, we'll send you a sticker anytime you need another dose of random science deliciousness. Ask your smart speaker to play brain junk podcast. You can also find us on Twitter as at my brain junk, and we're on Facebook and Instagram as brain junk podcast trace and I will catch you next time when we share more of everything you never knew you wanted to know and I guarantee you will not be bored.