Process
Taffy was first cooked in copper kettles over open coal fires, cooled on marble slabs, and pulled on a large hook on the wall. The 'Taffy Pull' was a household enjoyment on Saturday nights as well as an Atlantic City enterprise. Pulling taffy is designed to add air to the corn syrup and sugar confection. By draping 10 to 25 pounds of cooled taffy over the hook and then pulling away from the hook, the taffy stretches. When the taffy reaches a 5- or 6-foot length where it might become too heavy for itself and fall off the hook, the puller loops the taffy back over the hook, folding it onto itself and trapping air between the two lengths of taffy. This process of aeration helps to keep the taffy soft. The pulled taffy was shaped by hand-rolling it on marble or wooden tables into a 1⁄4-inch-diameter (6.4 mm) snake. It was then cut to a 2-inch length with scissors and, finally, wrapped in a pre-cut piece of wax paper with a twist at both ends. All of this was done by hand and usually within the sight of boardwalk strollers. The popular purchase in the 1880s was a 5-cent bag.
Read more about this topic: Salt Water Taffy
Famous quotes containing the word process:
“The process of education in the oldest profession in the world is like any other educational process, in that it requires time and effort and patience; it can only be acquired by taking one step at a time, though the steps become accelerated after the first few.”
—Madeleine [Blair], U.S. prostitute and “madam.” Madeleine, ch. 4 (1919)
“Consumer wants can have bizarre, frivolous, or even immoral origins, and an admirable case can still be made for a society that seeks to satisfy them. But the case cannot stand if it is the process of satisfying wants that creates the wants.”
—John Kenneth Galbraith (b. 1908)
“There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one’s own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind.... Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn’t, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn’t have to; but if he didn’t want to he was sane and had to.”
—Joseph Heller (b. 1923)