Despite the name, Turkish Taffy wasn’t always directly interactive, since it was originally stored behind Woolworth’s store counters in giant sheets. The helpful attendant would help you size out the piece you wanted, then would shatter it with a ball peen hammer, packaging up the resultant shards. The candy also isn’t Turkish, invented in the United States by the son of a Sephardic immigrant from the country. Albert Bonomo emigrated to the United States in the late 1800s and took up a trade as a candy maker in Coney Island, a business into which his son Victor followed him, developing this candy in the 1940s after a string of moderate successes ripping off more popular brands. Known as a ‘soft' or 'short nougat,’ similar to Italian torrone, it results from a mold-set mixture of egg whites and corn syrup. Victor Bonomo died in 1999 at the age of 100, but his company lives on, solely dedicated to the production of taffy bars and smaller ‘taffy nibbles.’ Also purchased on this same trip: a Zagnut, the odd coconut-covered peanut brittle bar whose 1960s TV ad campaign was even more memorable than the ones for Turkish Taffy.
Invented in 1912, Bonomo’s Turkish Taffy bar is billed as the ‘first interactive candy.’ A bit of a stretch, perhaps, considering the extent of the ‘interactivity’ here is bashing the extremely chewy candy against a surface hard enough to shatter it into a million pieces. If you miss this step, as I did after purchasing the bar from the Lower East Side’s always amazing Economy Candy, you may find yourself hopelessly gnawing at a series of too-large chunks, which remain totally resistant to stretching/bending. They can be cracked with teeth, but one attempt at this put such stress on my molars that I was afraid trying again would cost me a few fillings.
Despite the name, Turkish Taffy wasn’t always directly interactive, since it was originally stored behind Woolworth’s store counters in giant sheets. The helpful attendant would help you size out the piece you wanted, then would shatter it with a ball peen hammer, packaging up the resultant shards. The candy also isn’t Turkish, invented in the United States by the son of a Sephardic immigrant from the country. Albert Bonomo emigrated to the United States in the late 1800s and took up a trade as a candy maker in Coney Island, a business into which his son Victor followed him, developing this candy in the 1940s after a string of moderate successes ripping off more popular brands. Known as a ‘soft' or 'short nougat,’ similar to Italian torrone, it results from a mold-set mixture of egg whites and corn syrup. Victor Bonomo died in 1999 at the age of 100, but his company lives on, solely dedicated to the production of taffy bars and smaller ‘taffy nibbles.’ Also purchased on this same trip: a Zagnut, the odd coconut-covered peanut brittle bar whose 1960s TV ad campaign was even more memorable than the ones for Turkish Taffy.
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The coded language of snacks, sandwiches and seasonings, in NYC and beyond.
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