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What Is Irish Potato Sweet? Walk into nearly any candy store in Philadelphia around mid-March and next to the typical chocolate truffles, caramels, and fudge, you might find piles of Irish potato candy, a distinctively Philadelphian reward that was neither created in Ireland nor is typically made from potato. Like numerous regional foods, the sweet evokes a sticky sort of fond memories. I keep in mind consuming Irish potatoes as a kid, states Paul Bugg of Pennsylvania s Stutz Candy Company, however I ve never seen them beyond this location. Irish potato candies are child fist-sized soft confections designed to look like little potatoes, with a white center and brown exterior. They re generally made from a coconut-flavored cream filling which is formed into little, slightly oblong potato-sized pieces. Each candy is then cominged in cinnamon, which gives it the look of an unclean, newly dug-up potato. Often, however not constantly, pine nuts are ingrained atop the sweet to imitate a potato s stem buds or eyes. We might never ever understand who developed Irish potato sweet, states Ryan Berley, co-owner of Philadelphia s 154-year-old Shane Candy Company. But we re quite sure it was in the late 1800s or early 1900s, and most likely by Irish immigrant candy makers like our shop s founder Edward Shane. Chef Walter Staib who s likewise a cookbook author, Emmy Award-winning TELEVISION host, and historian states he knows for a fact that they were first made in Philadelphia by Irish immigrants. He now owns and runs Philly s City Pub, a reproduction of a dining establishment first put up in 1773. I studied on the dining establishment in those early days, Staib says. Beginning in the 1800s, Irish indentured servants worked at the restaurant and were making the candy. A minimum of something is specific: This candy does not have roots in Ireland. Regina Sexton, Irish food historian and history teacher at the University of Cork, Ireland, had actually never become aware of the sweet, but the cinnamon coating is an indicator of American tastes, she says. Dr. Chad Ludington, a senior research fellow in the department, concurs. It seems like an early-20th century American mixture, he says. https://usalocator.org/subway-locations/pennsylvania/biglerville I presume the Irish themselves would have been more reverent of the potato than to give a candy this name. According to every written and narrative history, the increase of Irish potato candy in Philadelphia most likely corresponded with a large increase of Irish immigrants. Prior to the Excellent Starvation, which happened between 1845 and 1852, America s Irish population was fairly low. However during and after the disaster, Philly s Irish population flourished as households immigrated to the U.S., looking for a more steady future. Irish immigrants were not totally invited when they arrived, notes Berley. There was a lot of prejudice. Part of the threat was that they were going to eliminate American jobs. However like Shane, they persisted and opened up services. Today, America s Irish-American neighborhood is often times bigger than the Irish population of Ireland. A number of modern-day makers suggest the sweet, thus many things, was created by accident. Possibly a chocolate maker had leftover coconut filling and didn t wish to toss it. Dave Lamparelli, the founder of Philadelphia sweet company Oh Ryan s, has his own pet theory based on easy economics. Candy makers do well on a lot of holidays: Valentine s Day, Easter, Halloween, Christmas, he says. But there s a lull between Valentine s Day and Easter, and possibly some chocolate maker believed, Oh, here s a simple thing I could make and sell for St. Patrick s Day. A Philadelphian reward Notes on American confectionery, among the first books written on American candy making, was published by Charles C. Huling in 1891. It does not consist of a dish for Irish potato candy, though it does include one for Cocoanut cream as a filling for chocolates. Confectionery books published outside of Philadelphia around the 20th century regularly included recipes for Cocoanut drops. Jake Friedman's Common-Sense Candy Teacher, dated 1911, consists of a recipe for Cream Potatoes: a coconut-flavored buttercream-like filling dipped in cinnamon and decorated with pignoli nuts to look like a potato s eyes. At some time a candy maker need to have provided them a new name, and it stuck. By the early 1900s, when Philadelphia was America s candy capital, between 200 and 300 candy manufacturers called the city home. Some of those candy companies are still in organisation today, consisting of Asher s, Whitman s, and Shane Candy Company, which was initially opened in 1863 by German candy make Samuel Herring. The store went through a number of owners and provided a range of sugary foods until 1911, when it was bought by Edward R. Shane, a canned fruit seller. We understand that Shane was of Irish descent, Berley states, which his family came to the United States in 1848 since of the Great Scarcity. When Shane took control of the building, he turned business into a retail store and likely included Irish potato candy to the menu, which also includes intense, glass-like molded sugar sweets and chocolate creams. In 2010, Ryan and Eric Berley, mustachioed history buffs and entrepreneurs who also run the Franklin Fountain, purchased the rundown shop from the Shane household. They invested 18 months renovating the old interior, and were able to maintain its initial wooden candy counter and apothecary-like shelving. Though the shop is still better understood for its clear toy sweet, head confectioner Stephen Padilla states its Irish potato candy is exceptionally popular this time of year. I d state we go through over 500 per week, Padilla says, keeping in mind that they are made in little batches and rolled and finished by hand. Shane s starts offering them on March 1 every year, and Padilla states they keep Irish potatoes on the shelves until around Easter. The dish Padilla makes today was adapted from that 1911 book of confectionery, according to the Berley siblings. To make the candy much more Philadelphian, they included cream cheese, which also offsets the sweet taste of the sweet with its tart notes, states Ryan Berley. It s a cream cheese and confectioners sugar mix, Padilla explains, to which we include macaron and angel flake coconut that has been rehydrated in coconut water. (Macaroon or dessicated coconut is more like little, pinhead chips of sweetened, dried coconut than stringy flakes.) The candies are then portioned by hand, rolled in cinnamon, and dotted with little bits of nuts or seeds. The majority of the bigger Irish potato producers put on t put cream cheese in their sweets, a minimum of in part because including fresh dairy decreases the candy s life span. Lamparelli s Oh Ryan s has actually been making Irish potato sweets considering that it opened 28 years back, utilizing vanilla buttercream (however not cream cheese), blended with coconut flavoring and macaroon coconut. We have two 130-year-old machines that procedure and cut and roll the filling into balls, Lamparelli states, and another machine that coats every one in cinnamon. Oh Ryan s production is enormous compared to Shane s. Oh Ryan s has actually sold 95,000 pounds of Irish potato candy this year, which works out to 2,800,000 specific potatoes. It s a bit odd, though, that 95 percent of Oh Ryan s candy is offered to residents in Pennsylvania, Delaware, and New Jersey. As soon as you get into New York City, 9 from 10 individuals don t understand what they are, Lamparelli notes. Over at Stutz Sweet Business which opened in Jenkintown, Pennsylvania, about Thirty Minutes north of Philadelphia, in 1938 Bugg concurs. One thing individuals forget is that East Coast cities, they prefer to hold on to their customs, he states. Irish potato candy is an example of that. People here purchase them year after year. Stutz offers nearly 2,000 pounds of the candy each year, which works out to be just under 20,000 individual pieces. Again, many of these are entering into mouths in Philly s tri-state area. However that s not to state West Coasters wear t know exactly what an Irish potato is. See s Candies, which was established in 1921 in Los Angeles and is now locateded in San Francisco, has produced what it calls St. Patrick s Day potatoes for over 50 years. See s records reveal that Ed Peck, a former company executive, created the concept for the potato candy, perhaps based off one he d had at a candy reveal out East. The California business s recipe is based upon a timeless soft sweet filling called divinity. Julie Moldafsky, who operates in See s advertising department, says its filling combines white chocolate-flavored divinity and crushed walnuts. That mix is then cooled and executed a machine that divides it into potato-sized knobs. Each is rolled by hand before being enrobed in milk chocolate, dusted with a mix of cocoa and cinnamon, and embellished with a few pine nuts. See s potatoes are offered each year in the month prior to St. Patrick s Day and seem to go quickly. The company sold out online especially early this year; 30,000 pounds of See s bigger potato sweets have already delivered out, and no more will be made this season. While Philadelphia s candy makers accommodate the East Coast, See s has a monopoly on the West Coast market, both in online orders and retail sales. You say potato, I state ... This confection, in name and dish, often gets puzzled with the potato sweet of the American South, which is made from real mashed potato and constantly includes peanut butter while, typically, the one that came from Philadelphia does not. The distinction can get confusing, because local lore and dish record keeping is practically never precise. Author Joseph Dabney consisted of a hand-me-down-style recipe called Irish potato sweet in his 2010 Southern food history Food, Folklore, and Art of Lowcountry Cooking. It consists of peanut butter:. Aunt Sophie s Irish Potato Candy. She d take one Irish potato and she d boil it. Then she d put it into a bowl, skin it and mash it up, and then sprinkle powdered sugar on it. At this point she would roll it out like a jelly roll. Then she d take peanut butter and she d spread peanut butter on the potato roll. Then she d sufficed up into areas like a jelly roll, spraying a bit more powdered sugar on top. We kids simply liked it. It captivated us and kept us from her hair for awhile. Mary Nicoles, Reidsville, Georgia. Generally dishes for potato sweet or old-fashioned potato candy are referencing a Southern custom and include peanut butter. Those that have Irish in front of their name practically never call for that component. That peanut butter addition is interesting, Ryan Berley states. I ve seen versions of Irish potato candy made with potato it s from Pennsylvania Dutch custom however peanut butter ... That s definitely not something you d see around here.