FOOD HISTORY Getting to the bottom of fluff is mandate of new cookbook

By LINDA GIUCA
HARTFORD COURANT
The inside info: "The Marshmallow Fluff Cookbook" by Justin Schwartz (Running Press Book Publishers, $9.95), is a trip down memory lane. It has been years since I ate a Fluffernutter, but I remember fondly the sticky process of eating this sweet sandwich.
According to the book's opening chapter, the idea to pair peanut butter and marshmallow on white bread dates back to 1923, when the suggestion appeared on Fluff can labels. (The name "Fluffernutter" would come later.)
Marshmallow creme's origins can be traced to Somerville, Mass., and 1917. A candy manufacturer made the sticky stuff in his factory, which he was forced to close due to rationing during World War I. The manufacturer sold the formula and the name to H. Allen Durkee and Fred L. Mower, whose company, Durkee-Mower, in East Lynn, Mass., remains family-owned today.
The the new book isn't even the first Fluff cookbook. That distinction goes to "The Yummy Book," which made its debut in the late 1940s when the weekly Flufferettes radio show, sponsored by Durkee-Mower, went off the air.
Get ready for a liberal sprinkling of trivia in this book. Despite technological advances, marshmallow creme is still mixed one batch at a time in Durkee-Mower's 13 professional mixers, and 5-pound containers of Fluff are packed by hand.
The paperback book is teeming with recipes that, thankfully, don't include nutrition information but probably would register at the high end of a sweetness scale. The most famous Fluff recipes -- the Fluffernutter, Never-Fail Fudge, Holiday Sweet Potatoes, Whoopie Pies -- are spelled out, and there are many other sweet concoctions. Some well-known pastry chefs and food writers offer their contributions, among them Gale Gand's chocolate and Fluff shortbread sandwiches and Dorie Greenspan's Fluff-filled chocolate madeleines.
The audience: The world certainly continue would spinning without 110 recipes using marshmallow in a jar. But if you routinely buy those 5-pound tubs of Fluff in warehouse clubs or know someone who does, this book will be useful.