Salt Water Taffy is a summer favorite!
Sharability: 5
Denture Danger: 10
Convenience: 8
Novelty: 9
Overall: 10
Do not be disgusted by the name of this candy because salt water is only in the name and not in the list of ingredients.
Though no one is sure where the name originated, the most popular story is of a man named David Bradley who had a store on the Atlantic City boardwalk in 1883.
One day a tidal wave rushed over his store soaking everything he had with salt water. The next day a girl walked into his store asking for some taffy. He sarcastically mentioned he had some “salt water taffy” which the girl bought and enjoyed.
Bradley’s mother thought that the name had a nice ring to it, so she convinced Bradley to rename his taffy to salt water taffy. He never trademarked the name, so it was not long before other people started marketing their taffy with that new catchy name.
A man named Joeseph Fralinger started to really market this candy by selling the thin logs of taffy in boxes as Atlantic City souvenirs. Another man named Enoch James came around to add some competition to this new marketing scheme by slightly changing the recipe making the candy less sticky and by selling it as bite-sized pieces.
Fralinger and James are still two of the biggest suppliers of salt water taffy on the Jersey Shore over 100 years after the competition began.
The salt water taffy experience begins by searching through the bag for the colors that seem to correspond with a flavor you might most enjoy. You then pull the ends of the wax paper wrapper and watch the candy spin open.
A lot of times the candy sticks to the wrapper so that you have an excuse to put the wrapper in your mouth and scrape the stuck taffy off with your teeth. A lot of the taffys have mixed flavors in which you can mix together in one bite or eat separately by biting along the lines.
Salt water taffy has such a great soft and chewy consistency and such a variety of flavors that eating one more never seems like such a bad idea.
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