Louisiana can claim cotton candy—sort of—as a highlight among its well-known inventions
BY REID CREAGER
We’ve got an illegal procedure call against the operators of the Caesars Superdome in New Orleans, home to this year’s Super Bowl on February 9.
Even though cotton candy has been claimed as one of Louisiana’s signature inventions, we could not find it on the stadium’s exhaustive food and snack list. Maybe this was an error of omission on the sites we checked—some of which seem uncertain whether the stadium’s NFL tenants are a football team (“Food Options to Try While Enjoying a New Orleans Saints Match”).
And how dare the stadium braintrust let themselves be upstaged by another NFL team when it comes to crazy cotton candy creativity?
Before the 2024 season, the Arizona Cardinals announced they were debuting a cotton candy burrito at the club level of State Farm Stadium. Deemed “deliciously horrifying” by one national news outlet, the concoction features cotton candy-flavored ice cream mixed with Fruity Pebbles, Foot Loops, marshmallows, Skittles, mini-M&Ms, gummy bears and sprinkles—all wrapped inside a cotton candy shell.
This savagely sweet sensation went viral almost instantly. The team decided to make it available throughout the stadium.
Maybe the apparent menu oversight at the Superdome is because Louisiana’s cotton candy connection is often overstated. At least one internet site proclaims cotton candy was invented in the 1920s by dentist Joseph Lascaux of New Orleans, who patented a more advanced device for spinning sugar.
Wrong: Cotton candy’s origins date to 1400s Italy, when chefs are known to have melted huge pans of sugar and spun it using a method involving a fork to flick strands of it over a broom handle.
Wrong: Lascaux never got a patent.
Wrong: His name was Josef, not Joseph.
Wrong: As Inventors Digest told you three years ago in a story about inventions from Nashville, modern cotton candy was invented in 1897 by William Morrison and John C. Wharton, who teamed to invent machine-spun candy and introduced it at the World’s Fair in 1904. Lascaux merely improved on the original device after its U.S. patent—No. 717,765, granted on January 6, 1903—expired 17 years to the day.
This much is correct about Lascaux: He changed the name of the confection from fairy floss to cotton candy, although contrary to some reports, he never trademarked it. And ironically, he and Nashville’s Morrison were both dentists.
Other invention claims from Louisiana—some more legitimate than others:
Poker
Similar to cotton candy and roots that spin back for centuries, poker is said to have originated nearly 1,000 years ago in various continents and cultures.
According to the trusted history.com, some historians say the game “can be traced to a domino-card game played by a 1100s Chinese emperor; others claim it is a descendant of the Persian card game ‘As Nas,’” going back to the 1500s.
The equally reputable poker.org says the game as we know it today originated in New Orleans in 1829, played with a stripped, 20-card deck. Its goal was for four players to bet on who had the strongest five-card hand. Texas Hold’em evolved from this.
Per onlyinyourstate.com, one of the earliest forms of poker got its start on the docks of New Orleans, called poque—”a popular game enjoyed by sailors, fishermen, and traveling merchants before it crept into New Orleans saloons and underground gambling dens. As the game traveled up and down the Mississippi River, more and more people were introduced to the game.”
Tabasco
There’s some hot debate here, but the two most common versions of tabasco’s origins involve Louisiana.
The hot sauce is made by the McIlhenny Co. of Avery Island in southern Louisiana. The company says it was created in 1868 by Edmund McIlhenny, who moved from Maryland to Louisiana around 1840.
However, an excerpt from the book “McIlhenny’s Gold” by Jeffrey Rothfeder says New Orleans plantation owner Maunsel White metaphorically planted that fiery flag first. He was “famous for the food served at his sumptuous dinner parties. Mr. White’s table no doubt groaned with the region’s varied fare—drawing inspiration from European, Caribbean, and Cajun sources—but one of his favorite sauces was of his own devising, made from a pepper named for its origins in the Mexican state of Tabasco. …
“Although the McIlhennys have tried to dismiss the possibility, it seems clear now that in 1849, a full two decades before Edmund McIlhenny professed to discover the Tabasco pepper, White was already growing Tabasco chilies on his plantation.”
Craps
We’ll just call him JB.
Jean-Bernard Xavier Philippe de Marigny de Mandeville, French aristocrat and one of the most colorful figures in Louisiana history, is said to have introduced this ancient English game to slaves in Louisiana during the early 1800s.
Urban legend says players sometimes hunched like toads on sidewalks, so the term “craps” originated from the French word “crapaud,” meaning “toad.”
JB was a busy guy. He has been described as a French- Creole American nobleman, playboy, planter, politician, duelist, writer, horse breeder and land developer. Whatitmeanstobeanamerican.org says he built New Orleans’ first subdivision.
Deep-fried turkey
More debate. Is it really a point of pride to be the first people to dump a turkey into a boiling pot of hot grease?
For those who love the taste, the answer is a resounding yes.
Cajun chef and culinary host Justin Wilson said he saw someone deep-fry a turkey in the 1930s. But it is generally agreed that this dish only goes back 40 years or so.
Seriouseats.com reported: “In December 1982, Gary Taylor, a United Press International reporter, filed a dispatch from Church Point, a small town of about 4,500 people in southwest Louisiana. ‘A few daring cooks,’ he reported, ‘have developed a new way to prepare a holiday turkey. They deep fry it—whole.’”
Some say the process goes back a decade further, when propane gas facilitated he process: lowering a turkey with a hanger-type apparatus into a large vat of oil heated with propane for 4-5 minutes per pound.
Smoothie King
After cotton candy, tabasco and deep-fried turkey, what the health is this entry doing here?
Steve Kuhnau opened The Smoothie Bar in 1973 in Kenner, Louisiana, to provide a more healthful eating alternative in the New Orleans area. He experimented with fruits and proteins into smoothie blends.
He became a strong proponent of smoothies for health and in 1989 founded Smoothie King Franchises with his wife, Cindy. Today, Smoothie King has hundreds of locations in the United States as well as locations in South Korea, the Cayman Islands, and Trinidad and Tobago.