Through the Past, Sweetly: The History of Halloween Candy (and More)

We tend to think of history as a list of wars, treaties and conquests, but anything can be a lens through which to view and examine the past. For founder of True Treats Historic Candies, Susan Benjamin, that lens is candy.

On our Halloween episode of Milk Street Radio, Susan sits down with Chris Kimball to discuss the deliciously naughty history of Halloween candy, how the sweet treat earned an evil reputation in the 19th century, and the ghostly encounters in her very own candy shop. Listen to the episode here, then read on for bonus lessons in old-fashioned sweetness.

On the working class origins of penny candy

When did [candy] make the transition to include kids? Candy was made as a result of two factors: marketing and the Industrial Revolution. And in the mid-1800s in North America, confectioners realized they could market to an untapped audience and that was working class kids. They could make it for them, they could sell it to them and they could advertise it to them. It was the first time these kids had access to the middle class....because they'd never been able to buy anything. If they were walking past a store, or if they were seeing people shop, whatever it was, it excluded them. This was the first time items were really made specifically for kids and it was affordable.

But candy wasn’t always for kids

Remember that the chocolates of the day were shaped as roses, with obvious and anatomical connections. It was pretty overt. For the kids, that's not what it meant to them. But in any event, it was considered something kind of offbeat and something kind of deliciously wrong, except for a certain group of people. And that was a nice fit to Halloween—Halloween was somehow very spooky and kind of wrong, but very sexualized as well.

Those rich people were really into sex. In fact, [at] some of their parties, they would have candies there that would tell you who was going to kiss you first. And they would have little activities around it. It wasn't that the well-to-do were very pure. It was that the well-to-do acted like they were very pure. But those higher-priced candies were meant for them and the lower-priced candies were for the kids. Those weren't really sexualized, but what it did mean was that it still was considered kind of evil.

The story of candy corn

Candy corn was invented in the late 1800s by a guy who was a confectioner, but he also had a farm, which everybody did in those days. And he got this idea around harvest time to make a candy that looked like chicken feed. And so he made it with the three layers, the different colors. It looked good, people were kind of into it, but he wasn't sure it was really going to sell. So, he went to his chickens and he threw the chicken feed [candy] out to them, and they loved that. They went crazy. If you have chickens, you know they eat anything.

But it wound up becoming important to the harvest aspect of Halloween, because it was chicken feed and it was for the fall. So when you look at those earlier Halloweens, as now, there's the candy corn. And there are very few specific candies you see over and over at that time, but the candy corn is one of them. What's really remarkable about candy corn is that people are so divided about it. So many people absolutely hate it, and so many people say they love it, and I think it's just to take on the people who don't like it.

On the evolution of potato candy

The history of candy in North America is really evolutionary, there weren't really any surprises, but more outgrowth of things. You would have times of popularity, depending on who you were, how much money you had, and how you lived. A very good example of that is potato candy, which is made from potatoes and was very popular in the Southwest and then into Idaho, maybe in Peru [outside of the U.S.], but also in Appalachia, where I am. That is where the potato came over from various places, like Ireland and Germany, for example, in the 1800s. That was really, really good for people who didn't have means. It's easy to grow. You can use leftovers. You could stir up the whipped potatoes that you may have had for dinner. [Potato candy] is whipped up potatoes, with powdered sugar. And then the flourish from the early 1900s: It was rolled flat, there was this strip of peanut butter in it, and they would roll it up that way. Peanut butter—cheap, right? Just like the potato, and people enjoyed it that way, especially around Christmas.

We actually do carry it at our shop. We have a group who makes it just for us every week. It [has] the texture, I would say, of caramel creams. It's soft, but it's not runny. It holds its own and it has a peanut butter swirl in the middle. What they would do is turn it into a log...then they would cut it in slices. So, you would eat a slice of potato candy and in the middle would be a spiral of peanut butter. And people who were in rural environments, who didn't have a lot of money and could grow potatoes, they were the ones who enjoyed it the most.

On the sticky roots of pulled taffy

Pulled taffy was everywhere after the Civil War. Before the Civil War, the oldest [form] was what the enslaved people were using as they were working on sugar cane plantations, because molasses is the dregs of sugar cane production. They couldn't get the sugar, but they could have the molasses, because it wasn't delicious. It wasn't the kind of thing that those who had means and weren't African American would enjoy. And so they would pull the molasses and add whatever was available to sweeten it to make it more appetizing. It did penetrate into the mainstream society, but my hunch about it is that it was still fairly rural. There was one note from a Civil War soldier in the Confederacy explaining at the beginning of the war how he had a fine evening pulling molasses and eating it.

And in the Taffy parties of the late 1800s you would have kids doing it. One group would be on one side of the room, and the other would be on another side. And it shows them pulling it. It was a rope, and they'd be pulling it, which is how you make taffy anyway, right? If you see a pull machine, it goes round and round and it makes taffy. They were doing it by hand. And as they were all well to do, and every party was a fashionable party, they were all dressed up in whites. You see these kids in white clothes pulling taffy—it’s not clear what happened to the clothes in that situation—but that's one of the many things that they did for Halloween parties, as well as summer parties and for general fun.


This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
All photos by True Treats.

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Claire Lower

Claire Lower is the Digital Editor for Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street, with over a decade of experience as a food writer and recipe developer. Claire began writing about food (and drinks) during the blogging boom in the late 2000s, eventually leaving her job as a lab technician to pursue writing full-time. After freelancing for publications such as Serious Eats, Yahoo Food, xoJane and Cherry Bombe Magazine, she eventually landed at Lifehacker, where she served as the Senior Food Editor for nearly eight years. Claire lives in Portland, Oregon with a very friendly dog and very mean cat. When not in the kitchen (or at her laptop), you can find her deadlifting at the gym, fly fishing or trying to master figure drawing at her local art studio.