Dental “Floss”

When you think of a confection made entirely from sugar, you wouldn’t guess two dentists would have a hand in its creation. But “fairy floss,” as it was initially known, resulted from an 1897 collaboration between dentist William J. Morrison and confectioner John C. Wharton.

In 1904, the pair traveled from their native Nashville to the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis to show off an electric candy-making machine they’d built in Wharton’s shop. National Geographic reports that the contraption unveiled in the Palace of Electricity isn’t much different from the ones used today. 

A heater turns sugar into syrup, which is spun into 50-micron strands using centrifugal force. These fine strands are then collected before they recrystallize, resulting in the fluffy pink or blue treats known to fairgoers worldwide.

Morrison and Wharton sold over 68,000 boxes of fairy floss during the eight-month run of the St. Louis fair. Each small wooden box of candy cost 25 cents — half the price of a fair ticket. While not the most consequential machine demonstrated in St. Louis — that’d probably be the X-ray machine — Morrison and Wharton’s invention has certainly endured. 

However, it would be perfected over the years. The original device tended to overheat and lose balance, which is why a second dentist plays a role in this story. In 1921, shortly before Morrison’s patent expired, Josef Lascaux attempted to redesign the machine. While he never filed a patent for his alterations, he sold his newly christened “cotton candy” out of his New Orleans office, mainly to the children he’d just performed dental work on. Somehow, the name stuck.

The legacy of the Electric Candy Machine has an interesting footnote, though. Though Lascaux thought there was room for improvement, the medical community thinks otherwise. In a paper published on the National Institute of Health’s National Library of Medicine website, seven scientists disclosed they’d used a tweaked cotton candy machine to produce artificial capillaries that kept cells alive for a week. 

Their thin fibers, made from a gel-like substance, allowed tissues to develop so close to each other that they could thrive. While complex tissues like a heart or kidney have yet to be developed, it’s incredible to consider how 1890s tech is on the leading edge of regenerative medicine. That’s not too shabby for two guys without an engineering or medical degree.

Racism For Breakfast

Convenient breakfast foods were a big deal at the 1893 World’s Fair. Unfortunately, they were served up with a hearty portion of Old South romanticism.

It all began in 1888 when Missourians Chris Rutt and Charles Underwood started operating a small grist mill. Though neither had a culinary background, they began developing a pancake flour formulation that only required adding water. This “innovation” was intended to help them repackage and sell excess flour. 

After some trial and error, they settled on a blend of wheat and corn flour, salt, and lime phosphate (which acts similarly to baking powder). While Rutt and Underwood’s creation was revolutionary enough to see their business acquired within a year, it was a former slave from Kentucky who made their mix a fixture in kitchens across America. 

Rutt was inspired to re-think the branding of his one-time “Self-Rising Pancake Flour” after seeing a minstrel show where men in blackface sang about Old Aunt Jemima. However, it was the Pearl Milling Company’s new owner — R.T. Davis — who brought the “mammy” to life.

In a booth meant to mimic the shape of a flour barrel, Nancy Green served pancakes to fairgoers while singing and telling sanitized stories about her life on a Southern plantation. These tales were inspired by the elaborate backstory featured in a pamphlet Davis had commissioned. 

In it, Aunt Jemima was characterized as a former house slave for one Colonel Higbee, a fictitious Louisiana man whose plantation was known for fine dining. As the story goes, a former Confederate general who fondly remembered her pancakes put her in touch with Davis’s company, which paid her in gold to oversee the construction of a factory that would produce her pancake mix. 

Fairgoers quite literally ate this story up. So much so that fair officials gave Green a special award for showmanship while Davis racked up as many as 50,000 orders from eager distributors. 

The character of Aunt Jemima proved so popular that paper dolls were added to every box. There were dolls for Jemima, her husband Mose, and their four children Abraham Lincoln, Dilsie, Zeb, and Dinah. Of course, in a sign of the times, a racial slur for African youth was used in place of “children.”

The Aunt Jemima boxes depicted the family both before and after she had sold her famous recipe. The “presale” boxes featured tattered clothes, while the “post-sale” boxes had elegant clothing that could be cut out and placed over the family, some of whom were dancing barefoot. 

The 1893 fair might have made one black woman a household name, but it did very little to promote the successes of African Americans after they’d been released from the bonds of slavery. This exclusion was despite the efforts of the Women's Columbian Association and the Women's Columbian Auxiliary Association to encourage greater inclusion.

In response to public pressure from the two Columbian Associations, the fair did bless a “Negro Day” where Frederick Douglass spoke. Tellingly, the accompanying picnic was prohibited from being held on the fairgrounds. 

Unlike many black people, Green ended up being a fixture at the World’s Fairs. According to her obituary in the Chicago Defender, she played the role of Aunt Jemima until she died in 1923. She appeared at every World's Fair but one.

—

Interestingly enough, Aunt Jemima’s husband wasn’t always Mose. He was originally called Rastus but was re-named to avoid confusion with the mascot of another brand. 

That brand, Cream of Wheat, was introduced to the masses in the same year and place as Aunt Jemima Pancake Flour. For the uninitiated, Cream of Wheat is a porridge-like breakfast that visually resembles grits but has a much smoother texture.

Cream of Wheat was created to move surplus grain, much like Rutt and Underwood had intended with their Aunt Jemima mix. Though “Chef” Rastus was presented as the face of the brand, the breakfast item was the brainchild of Scotsman Tom Amidon. 

Amidon was the chief miller at Grand Forks, North Dakota’s Diamond Milling Company. He proposed the mill’s owners package up a convenience food made from a portion of the wheat berry typically discarded during flour-making. 

After Diamond Milling augmented its regular flour shipment with ten cases of Cream of Wheat, food broker Lamont, Corliss & Company telegrammed requesting an additional 50 cases. The distributor sent the following wire the next day, “FORGET THE FLOUR. SEND US A [RAILROAD] CAR OF CREAM OF WHEAT.”

Cream Of Wheat’s Rastus never had the rich back story of Aunt Jemima, but he did have the same roots  — as a character in minstrel shows. Whereas Aunt Jemima actually resembled Green, Rastus’ initial likeliness was merely a generic drawing the package designer had lying around.

Cream Of Wheat didn’t quite have the draw of Aunt Jemima, but fairgoers seemed to like its heartiness and ease of preparation. Who knew casual racism could be so palatable?

A Proper Dessert

When you think of fair food, you probably don’t think of a slice of cake. However, it was the first thing socialite Bertha Palmer thought of.

As chair of the Exposition’s Board of Lady Managers, she asked her pastry chef at the Palmer Hotel to create a small cake-like dessert for the boxed lunches distributed at the Women’s Building. 

In response, pastry chef Joseph Sehl created a proto-brownie that the Palmer Hotel still serves today. Dense and fudgy — courtesy of eight eggs — Sehl’s “chocolate bar” wasn’t as sweet as modern brownies despite being topped with an apricot glaze.

Of course, like many items mentioned previously, Sehl’s treat wasn’t originally called a brownie. It doesn’t seem to have had any name at all. Regardless, it was extremely popular. This is likely why similar recipes popped up in 1896 and 1897.

The first “brownie” recipes appeared in Fannie Farmer’s Boston Cooking-School Cook Book and, oddly, the Sears & Roebuck catalog. The former made something more akin to a cookie, while the latter’s result fell somewhere between cakey and chewy.

There’s an unsubstantiated rumor that Sears recipe was developed by a man named Knapp, who worked under Sehl at the Parker. While that could be true, it could also be something whipped up by proud Chicagoans who wanted to claim both the unofficial and official brownies as their own.

The Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets takes a dim view of the Parker story. Still, contemporary magazines cite Joseph Sehl as the brownie’s creator and have published his recipe, which can also be found on the hotel’s website. 

Interestingly enough, the brownie name was inspired by author and illustrator Palmer Cox’s popular sprite characters, The Brownies, which first appeared in 1883. The Brownies had an enormous cultural impact at the time, inspiring the names of the Girl Scouts’ junior division and Eastman Kodak’s portable film camera.

Bringing this all full circle, The Brownies visited the Fair in the 1892 story “The Brownies In September.” They came to Chicago to assist with the construction and were disappointed that the Women’s Building had already been completed. It’s too bad they didn’t stick around for dessert.

Hotly Contested

“Great minds think alike” isn’t just an adage; it’s a literal fact. No less than five men came up with what’s now known as the hot dog.  

The man who gets the official credit is Charles Feltman, yet another German immigrant. While there’s a story about how Feltman sold frankfurters from a modified pie wagon, historian Bruce Kraig says that’s likely untrue. 

Though Feltman was a baker, he was also a restaurateur with a well-documented hatred of pushcart vendors. The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Food and Drink does say Feltman began selling his “red hots” on Coney Island in the early 1870s. 

While public records show many men sold hot dogs in the late 19th Century, the men who popularized the hot dog were all at the Columbian Exposition in 1893. Two of them, Austro-Hungarian émigrés Emil Reichel and his brother-in-law Samuel Ladany, had secured a concession stand in the “Old Vienna” section of the Chicago fair, conveniently located by one of the Midway Plaisance entrances.

The hot dog bun seems to be a later invention, as Reichel and Ladany purportedly served their “Vienna sausage” in a French roll topped with mustard and onions. Their mixture of beef and spices was considerably milder in flavor compared to the sausages Feltman sold at the time. Though there are no sales receipts, the fair itself had over 27 million attendees. 

Reichel and Ladany’s success at the World’s Fair encouraged them to found the Vienna Sausage Manufacturing Company that same year, which was ultimately renamed Vienna Beef in 1929. If you’ve ever passed a hot dog cart in Chicago, you’ve likely seen the company’s garish logo. 

The 1893 fair also propelled another family business with a familiar name. Oscar Mayer and his brother Gottfried supplied many of the fair’s sausage vendors and were an official sponsor of the German display. While the two Germans started their company as a North Side butcher shop, they too moved into manufacturing after the fair.

Given all the Germans and Austrians mentioned above, it certainly makes sense the names commonly associated with hot dogs — frankfurter and wiener — are derived from two cities known for their prized sausages, Frankfurt and Vienna (Wien). And for what it’s worth, no one at the 1893 fair called hot dogs “hot dogs.” 

For many years, it was widely believed that sportswriter and New York Evening Journal cartoonist Tad Dorgan coined the term hot dog. He was supposedly at a New York Giants baseball game when he heard a vendor pushing his “red-hot dachshunds.” It’s said Dorgan doodled a wiener dog in a bun, which he labeled a “hot dog” due to his inability to spell dachshund.

It’s a nice story, but there are two problems with it. One, Dorgan wasn’t living in New York when he was supposedly at the game. And two, there’s no record of the cartoon’s existence despite the widespread availability of Dorgan’s work.

The name is more likely the result of snarky college kids. Students at Yale University had taken to calling lunch wagons “dog wagons” because they believed that their frankfurters were made with dog meat. 

Entomologists Dr. Gerald Cohen, Barry Popik, and David Shulman wrote a monograph about this, sharing that they found a reference to “hog dogs” in an 1895 issue of The Yale Record. The term quickly spread to other colleges in the northeast, including Harvard, Cornell, and Princeton. 

One wiener purveyor, Billy Adams, was clearly in on the joke as he named his vending business the Yale Kennel Club. His wagon was adorned with paintings of various dog breeds, but primarily hounds and dachshunds. The Kennel Club was also decorated with stained glass art featuring even more dogs. 

Yale students apparently referred to the stained glass as “memorial panels.” Should you ever doubt the value of an Ivy League education, let this anecdote change your mind.

Pop-Ups

Anyone who claims popcorn first appeared at a World’s Fair will undoubtedly face challenges from those with Native American or Mesoamerican ancestry. 

Historical records show the Great Lakes Iroquois popped corn in heated crockery as far back as the 1600s. Thanks to discoveries in the late 1940s and early 1950s, we know that flint corn — the popping kind — has grown in North America since 2000 BCE.

Popcorn and the fairs didn’t seem to converge until the late 19th Century. That’s when receipts confirm popcorn vendors paid at least $3,000 for concession licenses at Philadelphia’s Centennial Exhibition.

However, some exciting developments in popcorn innovation were showcased at 1893’s Columbian Exposition. First and foremost, Charles Cretors demonstrated his steam-powered popcorn machine to those strolling along the fair’s Midway Plaisance. His contraption — which looked like a steampunk baby buggy — was a peanut roaster he’d modified after becoming disillusioned with its intended function.

Unlike other popping equipment at the time, Cretors’ invention distributed heat evenly so more kernels would pop. Until then, almost all popcorn was made in wire baskets over an open flame. It was also hand-seasoned with butter and salt, resulting in a snack that was either soggy or too dry. Cretors provided a workaround, as his machine popped kernels in leaf lard and butter oil for a more uniform taste and texture.

Cretors’ seasoning hack wasn’t his only contribution to increasing popcorn consumption in the U.S. He also added wheels to his popcorn machine, making the snack readily available to the masses. Previous set-ups weren’t as ingeniously mobile as Cretors’ wagon. Within a decade of Cretors hauling his popcorn machine down to Jackson Park, similar wagons appeared outside silent movie theaters across the country.  

While many theater owners initially viewed the aroma of popcorn as an unwelcome distraction during screenings, most came around. During the Great Depression, operators realized a 5- or 10-cent bag of popcorn could be the difference between solvency and ruin. When one such theater owner, Glen Dickinson, Sr., learned that popcorn was more profitable than movie tickets, he purchased farmland and began raising corn.

—

Just as popcorn and the movies have become synonymous, people often associate Cracker Jack with baseball. Yet the song “Take Me Out To The Ballgame” wasn’t written until 1908. While lyricist Jack Norworth is responsible for making Cracker Jack part of our popular culture, its launch pad was the 1893 fair.

Cracker Jack’s creator, former Illinois farmhand and German immigrant Frederick “Fritz” Rueckheim, was lured to Chicago more than 20 years before the fair to help clean up the Great Fire of 1871. Rueckheim invested $200 in a pre-existing popcorn stand shortly after his arrival. Within two years, he bought out his partner and recruited his brother Louis to help grow the operation.

Over time, the brothers experimented with different complements to their popcorn. An early molasses-and-peanuts version is what reportedly debuted at the fair. Like Cretors, they weren’t an official vendor, so verifying the brothers were there is difficult. It’s probable, though, as the Chicago History Museum confirms the Rueckheims had established a three-story factory on S. Clinton Street by 1893. Current Cracker Jack owner Frito-Lay also asserts the brothers were selling their product to throngs of fairgoers. 

In an interesting twist, the doubters — like Northwestern University’s Bill Savage — are also right when they argue Cracker Jack wasn’t exhibited at the Columbian Exposition. In one small way, it wasn’t. The name, a synonym for striking excellence, wasn’t registered until 1896. Before this, Cracker Jack was simply known as "Candied Popcorn and Peanuts." Catchy, huh?

Red Gold

The second World’s Fair held in the U.S., Philadelphia’s Centennial International Exposition, commemorated the 100th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence’s signing. While the time and place were incredibly synergistic, so was the connection between Philly and ketchup.

That’s because in 1812 local scientist James Mease developed the first-known ketchup recipe that featured tomatoes (then known as “love apples” for their supposed aphrodisiac qualities). A major difference between his concoction and the condiment we know today was the absence of its vinegary tang.

Ketchup, however, pre-dates both Mease and tomatoes. Its roots go back to imperial China, where documents dating to 300 BCE mention fermented pastes derived from soybeans, meat by-products, and fish entrails. 

Speakers of the Southern Min dialect called the fish sauce “ge-thcup” or “koe-cheup.” Guaranteed not to spoil on long voyages at sea, this version of ketchup was preferred by Hokkien Chinese sailors and introduced to those in ports of call along the Indian and Pacific Oceans. 

By the late 1600s, British traders had acquired a taste for the condiment. Its arrival in their homeland led to a wide variety of mutations, including pastes made from mollusks, mushrooms, nuts, lemons, plums, or peaches.

Regardless of the base, these recipes were either boiled until thick and syrupy or mixed with salt. Both processes had the same result: a highly concentrated form that was shelf-stable for long periods.

At the 1876 Centennial Exposition, 30 years after Mease’s death, Henry John Heinz showed off his take on tomato-based ketchup in the fair’s Agriculture Hall. Though both men’s recipes had commonalities — namely, tomatoes and spices — Heinz preferred vinegar over brandy and added brown sugar. 

Heinz’s modest booth put his business on the path to success, thanks to over 10 million fair attendees. The fledgling H. J. Heinz Company was the 32-year-old’s second entrepreneurial endeavor. His initial foray saw him bottling his mother’s horseradish recipe.

While that company subsequently expanded into pickles, mustard, and fruit preserves, it failed in the wake of the Panic of 1873. The financial crisis resulted in a prolonged depression throughout North America and Europe. By 1876, however, Heinz was back in business upon receiving financial backing from two of his brothers. Fortunately for him, the second time was the charm. 

Speaking of charms, that segues into Heinz’s second appearance at a World’s Fair. His company returned for the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago, which drew hundreds of thousands of visitors daily. While The H.J. Heinz Company had the largest commercial food booth at the fair, it was relegated to a no man’s land — the Agriculture Building’s second floor.

Understanding that people wouldn't bother to climb the stairs without an incentive, Heinz leveraged his shrewd marketing skills. To drive traffic, he hired local youth to blanket the fairground with gilded tags entitling recipients to a free souvenir when redeemed at his booth. 

So many clamored for a plastic pickle-shaped pocket watch charm that a line formed down the stairs, and police were summoned to maintain order. Reportedly the second floor began to sag due to the unexpected crowd and had to be shored up. Heinz gave away over a million pickle charms by the end of the five-month-long fair. Emblazoned with his last name, the tchotchke provided Heinz with free advertising long after booth visitors had returned home. 

This tactic was but one example of Heinz’s savvy. To compete against companies like Hunts, Heinz committed to only using the highest-quality ingredients. He sourced the best tomatoes available and processed them at the peak of freshness. Heinz also implemented strict production standards that guaranteed every ketchup bottle offered a uniform taste and texture, something many competitors couldn’t match.

Though it seems like a small thing now, perhaps Heinz’s most notable innovation was the introduction of clear glass bottles. In an era when spoiled ketchup could surprise consumers, this transparency demonstrated that Heinz was a high-quality product.

Heinz’s zeal culminated in the company winning two gold medals for product quality and factory conditions at Paris’ Exposition Universelle Internationale in 1900. Ooh la la.

World’s Fare

The last U.S. World’s Fair bombed so spectacularly there hasn’t been another in 40 years. The 1984 Louisiana World Exposition was ruinous enough that its New Orleans organizers declared bankruptcy not after but during its run.

If you haven’t heard of a World’s Fair before, it’s likely because you’re not a Boomer or Gen Xer. Before they fell out of fashion, a World’s Fair could feel like EPCOT and Disneyland combined. This analogy is especially astute as Walt Disney himself created four attractions for the 1964 World’s Fair in Queens, NY, including the iconic It’s A Small World ride and a precursor to the Magic Kingdom’s Hall of Presidents.

Going further back, London's Crystal Palace was the centerpiece of the first World’s Fair in 1851. The pavilion resembled a massive greenhouse fashioned from prefabricated cast iron and glass sections. Similar showpieces followed in short order, with a Crystal Palace knock-off in Manhattan in 1853 and the first Ferris Wheel in Chicago in 1893. The event’s planners saw the latter as a response to the 1889 Parisian fair, which had no less than the Eiffel Towel as its purpose-built attraction.

These architectural and engineering marvels weren’t the only icons of the World’s Fairs. While the initial purpose of the exhibition was to show off innovations at a time of significant industrialization, the fairs also grew into cultural exchanges. And that’s how they came to introduce or popularize some of today’s most ubiquitous foods.

Popular food and drink and their World’s Fair connections:

• 1876 World's Fair (Philadelphia, PA)

  Heinz ketchup [popularized]

• 1893 World's Fair (Chicago, IL)

  Hot buttered popcorn [popularized]

  Cracker Jack [popularized]

  Hot dogs [popularized]

  Brownies [introduced]

  Juicy Fruit chewing gum [introduced]

  Aunt Jemima pancake mix [introduced]

  Cream of Wheat [introduced]

  Shredded wheat [introduced]

  Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer [popularized]

  *Renamed the Pearl Milling Company in 2021

• 1904 World's Fair (St. Louis, MO)

  Cotton candy [introduced]

  Ice cream cones [popularized]

  Hamburgers [popularized]

  JELL-O [introduced]

  Peanut butter [popularized]

  Iced tea [popularized]

  Dr. Pepper [popularized]

  Club sandwiches [popularized]

• 1939 World's Fair (New York, NY)

  Puffed wheat/puffed rice cereals [introduced]

• 1964 World's Fair (New York, NY)

  Belgian waffles [introduced]

  Egg rolls [popularized]

  Sushi [popularized]

  Fondue [popularized]

  Tandoori chicken [popularized]

  Churros [popularized]

  Falafel [popularized]

  Sangria [popularized]

• 1984 World's Fair (New Orleans, LA)

  Cajun & Creole Cuisine [popularized]

  Muffaletta [popularized]

  Bananas Foster [popularized]

While the 1876, 1893, and 1904 fairs were consequential in their contributions to the American diet, the 1939 and 1964 New York events put food front and center in ways no U.S. fair had. Though the 1893 fair in Chicago had food makers on display, they were spread throughout the fairgrounds. With the New York fairs, food and the companies who produced it had dedicated spaces.

In 1939, there was the massive Food Building (Food North), a smaller exhibition area (Food South), and an adjacent food zone with brand-focused facilities. It’s here Borden demonstrated its strides in cow-milking technology, and Kraft used machinery with human-like “fingers” to package its Philadelphia-brand cream cheese. Continental Baking similarly showed off how Hostess Cakes and Wonder Bread were made in a building resembling the latter’s signature polka-dotted bread bag. The company even planted an entire field of wheat in the rear.

Perhaps foreshadowing the widespread use of psychedelic drugs, 1964’s Food Building featured a dramatically lit hall with surreal scenes celebrating the nation’s achievements in aquaculture, agriculture, and horticulture. Its displays included winged lobsters, bejeweled avocados, and a waterfall of roses that spilled into the desert.

In addition to this unique experience, a more conventional World of Food building was planned. It was intended to showcase corporate entities like Miller Brewing and Wise Potato Chips. However, due to financing issues, the partially built five-story structure was razed two weeks before its official opening. With traditional American foods consigned to the individual state pavillions, hungry fairgoers had greater reason to sample international delights like chow mein and kimchee.

According to The Washington Post’s Phyllis C. Richman, the only safe bets in Knoxville at the penultimate 1982 fair were the cole slaw and biscuits. Depending on how you feel about barbecued neckbones and pickled pigs’ feet, it could be a blessing that America is no longer hosting World’s Fairs.

It’s not for lack of trying, though. There was an effort underway by a Twin Cities suburb to secure the 2027 Expo, but Serbia won out. The mind, however, boggles when thinking of what food fads Minnesota could’ve given us. Porketta sandwiches? Tater tot casseroles? Walleye on a stick?