Turkish taffy

Turkish Taffy Is a "chewy" (usually hard and crunchy) taffy-like candy bar, which comes in several flavors.

Turkish Taffy was invented in 1912 by Austrian immigrant Herman Herer, who sold the rights to M. Schwarz & Sons of Newark, New Jersey, which were acquired in 1936 by Victor Bonomo, a Sephardic Jew whose father, Albert J. Bonomo, had emigrated from Izmir, Turkey and founded the Bonomo Company in Coney Island, New York in 1897 to produce saltwater taffy and hard candies.

According to Tico Bonomo, son of Victor, Turkish Taffy "was not really a taffy, but what is technically known as a short nougat," consisting of a batter of corn syrup and egg whites that was cooked and then baked. It was also not Turkish, but created after World War II in the Bonomo factory. It has been marketed in vanilla, chocolate, strawberry and banana flavors.

Turkish Taffy was originally sold in large sheets to Woolworth's stores, where pieces were broken off with a ball-peen hammer at the counter and sold by weight. In the late 1940s the company released a version in candy-bar size which the purchaser could whack against a hard surface to break into bite-sized pieces. This property of being shattered or broken by sudden shock, but still pliable and soft when chewed is possible because the candy is a non-Newtonian fluid. Since the pieces were both chewy and slow-melting in the mouth, it was a favorite for the frugal customer. A bar still cost 5¢ in the 1960s. By that time, it was marketed by Gold Medal Candy Corporation of Brooklyn, New York.

In 1949 Turkish Taffy became one of the first forms of candy advertised and marketed on television, when Bonomo created and sponsored The Magic Clown on NBC Television. Tico Bonomo specifically cited the decision to use television as instrumental in the popularity of the candy-bar sized taffys.

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