Cotton candy or candy floss is a very different kind of hard candy, filaments of sugar glass so fine that they have the consistency of a cotton ball and dissolve away the moment they touch the moist mouth. Cotton candy is made in a special machine that melts the sugar and forces it through tiny spinnerets into the air, where it instantly solidifies into threads. It was introduced at the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis.
From the book On Food and Cooking (2nd edition) by Harold McGee. © 2004 Harold McGee.
By permission of Scribner, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.