Photo by Sandy Huffaker, Jr.

Easter Peeps, Palmer chocolate bunnies. These marshmallow animals are part Nerf toy and part food.

The Peep sat in the nest my palm made. My Peep was yolk-yellow. His? (Her?) brown candy eyes peered up at me the way baby birds peer up at their mothers. I jiggled the Peep in one hand, clutched the phone in the other.

My ear took in the exuberant voice of state folklorist for the Maryland State Arts Council Charley Camp. Open on my desk was Camp’s American Foodways: What, When, Why and How We Eat in America (August House, 1989). Camp’s photo looked out from the book jacket’s back flap. Camp had smiled at his photographer, showing large, square white teeth beneath a magisterial mustache.

From his desk in his Baltimore office, Mr. Camp was telling me about last year’s marshmallow symposium at the Smithsonian, “Marshmallow: Its History, Technology, and Place in American Culture.” Some papers, he said, were quite serious; others more playful.

Camp presented a paper titled “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Easter: Fetal Foam Finds a Form.” Camp’s fetal foam, of course, was what he described as “primal, elemental” marshmallow. “Like the stuff of our very planet,” noted Camp’s opening line, “marshmallow is firm when cool, molten when warm.” And a few lines down, “It is in a heated state that the marshmallow proudly displays the reproductive capacity that strengthens its ability to conjure spring and Easter in the human imagination. This characteristic is carried over into the miniature animals frequently fashioned from the spongy stuff this time of year.”

One form this primal foam finds is the Peep, the ersatz baby chick who, with his brother and sister chicks, is meant to nestle among strands of an Easter basket’s green grass. The Peep begins as extruded, semi-soft, ivory-white marshmallow. He acquires his color — yellow, hot pink, bright white, or lavender—through a spray of dyed gritty sugar. The wingless, footless Peeps come in rows of five. These Identical quintuplets are joined at the waist. When I separated the Peep that rested in my palm from his brother or sister Peep, I tore away both Peeps’ yellow sugar skins. White marshmallow showed through. The wound in the side left me slightly uneasy.

“Part of my speech,” said Mr. Camp, “was taken from my American Foodways, but most of what I said, I wrote up for the symposium. There seemed something particularly striking about food made into the shapes of baby animals that was supposed to be eaten by children. There is nothing very foodlike about these baby animals like the Peeps, in color or shape. I noted that these marshmallow animals are part Nerf toy and part food. They retain a prenatal softness about them.

“But the basic point of my talk was that the relationship between marshmallow and Easter had to do with spring and birth, because there’s something very unborn and inchoate, or just born about the texture and malleability of these things.” (Mr. Camp wrote in “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Easter: Fetal Foam Finds a Form”: “Marshmallow is, by sensory reading of its characteristics, something in the process of becoming something else. It is this impression that provides the basis for marshmallow’s enduring association with both the Christian feast of Easter and the pagan rites of spring that Easter both embraces and subverts.”)

Mr. Camp had given me so much to think about that I was happy to be able to tell him something he found of interest. “Did you realize,” I asked, “that the Peep, in addition to the traditional yellow Peep, pink Peep, and white Peep, now comes in lavender?” He said he wasn’t surprised to hear that, given lavender’s association with spring.

Marilyn Mazer is community relations manager for Just Born, the company that since 1953 has manufactured Peeps. The air outside Just Born’s Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, plant, unlike the usual sulfurous Pennsylvania air, said Ms. Mazer, carries the sweet perfumes of candymaking. She sighed. She said, “This is a lovely place.”

I told Ms. Mazer how surprised I was when I went Easter-candy shopping to see Just Born’s bright yellow boxes packed with lavender Peeps. She said she was not surprised that I was surprised. “This is a big deal in the history of Peeps, our first lavender. On purpose there hasn’t been much change, because the essence of Peeps is nostalgia, memory, passing your happy Easter memories on to your children.”

Ms. Mazer said all this in a spirited tone. Not a bit of mawkish rubato.

Did she know how Peeps came to be called “Peeps”?

She didn’t. She said that Just Born had copyrighted the Peeps name. “But as to how they got the name, nobody seems to know.”

The Just Born name sometimes confuses people, said Ms. Mazer. “They think we make diapers or basinettes. But we’ve never made anything other than candy.”

Like many American candy companies, Just Born is privately owned and family-run. “Just Born’s founders, Sam Born and Irvin Shaffer, started the company in 1923. We’ll be 75 years old in 1998.

The candy industry has a “25 by ’95” campaign, aimed at raising per capita candy consumption to 25 pounds by 1995.

“Sam Born had a wonderful imagination for creating elaborate chocolate confections. He had a shop in New York. Every week Sam’s window dresser would lay out a display of Sam’s newest chocolates in the store window. One day, playing on the Born, name, the window dresser put together a display with a stork who held in one foot a scale heaped with chocolates, and by the stork the dresser placed a sign on which he’d printed, ‘Just Born.’ That became the company name, and it has held that name ever since.”

In 1935, Just Born acquired the Maillard Corporation, a Pennsylvania chocolate manufacturer that made hand-dipped and hand-decorated chocolates, and moved to Bethlehem. “We don’t do anything chocolate anymore,” said Ms. Mazer, “although people in our plant remember when this was a chocolate factory.”

The Rodda Candy Company, acquired by Just Born in 1953, was Peeps’ original maker. The old Rodda plant, said Ms. Mazer, was in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, the heart of Pennsylvania

Dutch farm country. Until 1953, when Just Born moved the Peep manufactory to the Just Born factories outside Bethlehem, Peeps were made entirely by hand. “A team of about 80 Pennsylvania Dutch farm women,” said Ms. Mazer, “when they weren’t working in the fields in summer, made Peeps. They made them by squeezing the marshmallow mixture out of large pastry tubes.

It was an arduous process. The women’s hands would have swollen to twice their normal size by the end of the day. At night, when they went home, they’d soak their hands in cold water to bring down the swelling. Then, they’d get up in the morning, come back to the factory, and start again.”

Just Born, said Ms. Mazer, realized that an endless supply of women was not going to continue to be willing to do the work, particularly after Rodda moved to Bethlehem and lost the Pennsylvania Dutch labor supply. In 1953 no mechanical means existed for making three-dimensional marshmallow figures. It took a while, she said, to figure out the process. “But the payoff was an enormously increased speed in which Peeps could be made.”

Yellow Peeps are made one day, white another, pink another, and now on yet another day, lavender. Peeps begin as the quintuple row of extruded marshmallow blobs. The blobs bob along a conveyor belt. Automated systems move stacks of still-sightless, colorless Peeps in and out of drying rooms. On a yellow day, yellow sugar is sprayed onto the white marshmallow extrusions, on a pink day, pink sugar, and so on.

Computers trigger tiny extruders that pop out light brown edible candy onto Peep heads for Peep eyes.

“With mechanization,” said Ms. Mazer, “we can make 400 million Peeps a year. More than one for every man, woman, and child in America.”

Ninety-seven percent of Americans, according to a recent poll, take their initial bite into a chocolate rabbit by sinking their teeth into its ears. Jim Tucker, vice president of sales and marketing at the R.M. Palmer Company, headquartered in Reading, Pennsylvania, is among the ear-biters.

I mentioned that I had before me on my desk R.H. Palmer’s one-ounce, 150-calorie “Little Beauty.”

“The guy with the coral bow tie and the two Easter eggs?”

“Yes.”

“R.M. Palmer’s,” Mr. Tucker said, “is the largest manufacturer of chocolate Easter bunnies in the United States, in the world. We sell to everybody.” On the afternoon that I talked with the basso-voiced Mr. Tucker, he had just finished leading a three-hour meeting of sales and marketing and art department people. “We were talking about Easter for 1996. We go to market with catalogues and prices in July.”

He was hoarse and stopped, as he talked, to cough a dry cough. “I’m not exactly sure when the first chocolate rabbit was made. The art of molding started in Europe. I’m pretty sure the Germans made the first chocolate molded rabbits during the 1800s. Over in Germany, they still have chocolate bunnies that are molded, whereas most of the molds in England are for chocolate eggs. The rabbit really isn’t the deal over in the U.K.

“In terms of the United States, hollow bunny molds are not ancient history, not a colonial tradition. In terms of manufacturing, the chocolate rabbit’s been manufactured on molding lines for 50 years.”

Later, I would learn more about rabbit molds. I talked with Dr. William Timberlake, an 80-year-old retired New Hampshire neurologist, who, with his wife, candymaker Dorothy Timberlake, has amassed a collection of some 10,000 candy and ice cream molds. Two-piece chocolate molds were first made in France. “The date 1843 comes to mind,” said Dr. Timberlake. These molds were stamped out of tin by presses used for mending coins. The chocolate rabbit mold, fabricated in both tin and copper, said Dr. Timberlake, was made first in France and Germany. But the Germans, he assured me, were the principal makers of rabbit molds, with Anton Reiche of Dresden, who began making rabbit molds in 1870, considered the master. Reiche’s exquisitely detailed molds were regularly copied by other mold makers. By the 1890s, German manufacturers supplied most molds, for rabbits and other figures used in the U.S. During World War I, these molds became unavailable. U.S. candymakers, said Dr. Timberlake, then brought several German mold makers to the U.S. and put them to work fabricating candy molds. From that point on, most candy molds for use by U.S. confectioners were made in the States.

In 1948, when R.H. Palmer started making rabbits, the. process had been partially mechanized. “Your mold then, for the hollow rabbit,” said Jim Tucker, “had two pieces, two sides. Liquid chocolate was poured into one side, and then the other, empty half was placed over the filled half with little clips. Then what they would do — imagine a big crab trap or a big cage — they would put 20 of these filled molds in one of these cages and they’d have ten of these cages. Now, imagine a big rotary machine fitted out with ten arms that stick out from its center. The crab trap-like cages filled with the bunny molds were hung off these arms. They would wheel this big rotary machine into a cool area and then crank this thing with the ten arms. The ten-armed machine revolved around and around, causing the liquid chocolate inside the molds to fly up against the molds. That is the way they actually became hollow, through centrifugal force.

“The workers would be in there in what was really a pretty chilly room for an hour or so, just cranking this ten-armed contraption. Wrapping was all done by hand, but now with technology, we have foiling machines that do that wrapping with amazing speed.”

Rabbit-making is now almost entirely automated and computer controlled. Rows of open two-piece molds made from Lexan polycarbonate sheet plastic travel down conveyor belts. From above, tepid chocolate pours into the molds. Then the molds are snapped shut and rotated until chocolate covers the mold’s surfaces. Filled molds then pass into a chill tunnel, where they harden. Once the rabbits have “set,” white-coated workers come along and pop each rabbit out of its mold. The rabbits then pass along on belts to decorators who add sugar candy eyes and other decoration.

In the beginning, rabbit makers made only the “profile” rabbit, in which both sides of the rabbit are identical. “That profile bunny,” said Mr. Tucker, “was usually sitting on its haunches, and 90 percent of the time his name was Peter Rabbit. Peter was sold out of a plain four-sided setup box with maybe a little Easter grass tossed in around his feet.

“What Mr. Palmer did, one of his claims to fame that really got us going in the field, was that he created a 3-D bunny that faces the consumer. And then, next, instead of plain old traditional Peter Rabbit, Mr. Palmer put a personality to the rabbit and he got designers in to create artwork, good artwork, for the packaging. For instance, Baby Binks, one of the first 3-D personality items we ever had, faced forward, and Baby Binks had the cutest smirk on its face and some blue edible icing eyes.

“Baby Binks was also packaged so that it could transport successfully. A lot of these things in the old days weren’t suitable for intrastate transport, because they weren’t boxed correctly. Mr. Palmer perfected the box so these guys could transport, and then with this good-looking artwork on the boxes, he gave the whole package a gift appearance. So that Mom, when she came down the store aisle, doing her Easter shopping, she saw Baby Binks or Traveler, Flopper, Hopper, or Topper. Not only did these guys have great personality and great art, but this better-figured and whimsical 3-D bunny now looked right out at Mom from the retailer’s shelf.

“What’s developed since, with what in the industry are now called ‘personality bunnies,’ are items as special as Willy Wacket, a hollow bunny with a tennis ball and tennis racket. There’s Dapper Dan, a hollow milk chocolate fellow who wears a pink candy top hat. There’s the 2.5-ounce hollow Skeeter Skateboard Rabbit, the 4.5-ounce hollow Barbie Bunny. We have one we introduced two years ago, called Bunny Biggers, this is a 10-ounce bunny where I’d say 75 percent of the bunny of that chocolate figure is just ears and he’s got this squatty body and it’s really cute. The pupils of his eyes are turned up, so that his eyes are looking up at those big ears.”

I asked about the largest R.H. Palmer rabbit. Mr. Tucker answered, “The biggest we make is 20 ounces, Grand Bunny Heffaflumper, probably will retail for anything from $7 to $10. With the Heffaflumper we are targeting those grandparents.” For all the innovation in chocolate rabbitry, said Mr. Tucker, the successful rabbit maker also must “keep mindful at all times that we always want to provide that traditional rabbit, because many parents and grandparents feel more akin to the profile rabbit or the cute, round-tummied, Peter-type 3-D rabbit. We are dealing there with nostalgia. But, there’s also this new generation, the ‘What’s going on’ generation, and for them, we try to keep current with trends.”

How many rabbits does R.H. Palmer turn out annually?

“Golly,” said Mr. Tucker, “millions and millions. I would say that maybe one in three persons in the United States will enjoy a Palmer bunny this Easter.”

Mr. Tucker had mentioned, early in our conversation, that Palmer uses no stock bunny molds, that each chocolate bunny is made in molds used only by R.H. Palmer. Designing new rabbits, said Mr. Tucker, is a collaborative effort between Palmer’s art department, himself, and Rich Palmer, Jr.

Palmer’s art department director is Rob Pierce. A pleasant-voiced man in his 40s, Mr. Pierce came to Pennsylvania and R.H. Palmer from Manhattan, where he worked in advertising and studied with Walt Disney animators. He has been at Palmer’s for seven seasons. “Everything,” Mr. Pierce said, “begins with the imagination. The idea is to put life in the characters, not to have just a generic bunny.” He sometimes goes out and studies real rabbits, “for movement, the way anyone doing any piece would do.”

After preliminary pencil sketches, Mr. Pierce and his staff prepare paintings that show the chocolate rabbit and its attendant candy decor from a variety of angles. “Those paintings are provided to a sculptor, and the sculptor, using clay, models this new rabbit in three dimensions. Once the sculpture is approved, the clay model is molded in latex, and this mold, what we call a ‘one-up’ mold, is poured for test reproduction in our lab line. We don’t want to sink a whole lot of money into multiples until we’re satisfied. Once the mold is approved, then actual production molds are made, either from hard vinyl or aluminum or steel, depending on the line.”

The Palmer art department also designs boxes in which rabbits are packed. “We actually have a lot of fun here,” said Mr. Pierce. “The most important thing is that what we’re making is for children and our product should make children smile. And if the product does that, then we’ve achieved what we have set out to do.”

The Indiana chocolate marshmallow egg maker whom I called said he was too busy to talk to me. His Mogul, he said, was down.

I wanted to ask, “Mogul? What’s a Mogul,” but the gentleman’s voice carried such hysteria,

I kept my mouth shut.

“Melster’s Candies out in Cambridge, Wisconsin, about 20 miles from Madison, they’re very big in marshmallow,” he said. “They make a good chocolate-covered marshmallow egg. Talk to them.”

I telephoned Melster’s and said that I wished to chat with someone about how their marshmallow eggs were made. A female voice, blessed with a lovely lilt, responded. “Come on over. We’re in the white building at the end of Madison Street.” I explained I was calling from California and wanted only to speak to someone by telephone. “Oh,” said the voice, “-oh.”

The Melster brothers, Harvey and Arthur, founded their business 70 years ago with a two-piece chocolate-covered cherry candy bar they called Cherrie Twins. To Cherrie Twins, the Melsters soon added Angel Food, a puffy, chocolate-covered marshmallow wedge. Melster’s survived the depression, came through World War II's sugar and chocolate rationing. They got into circus peanuts, the orange marshmallow candies shaped like a peanut. In 1981, Penn Dutch, a Pennsylvania candy company, bought Melster’s and expanded its marshmallow line to include the marshmallow Easter Egg. Today, in Cambridge, population about 1008 at latest count, Melster’s is the largest employer, with a staff of 80 candymakers, packers, and office personnel. At peak production, when Christmas and Easter specialties are made, 115 are at work in the white building at the end of Madison Street.

I learned all this from a second female voice, to whom the lyrical first had turned me over. The second woman didn’t want to give her name. She said, “I’m of no importance. I’ve been here for a long time, 31 years. All I do is work in the office.”

I said, “Gee, the air must smell wonderful in Cambridge, what with marshmallow and chocolate cooking all day.”

She harrumphed a moment, then answered. “I guess so. But after all these years, I don’t smell it as anything different at all.”

I’m grateful to this anonymous woman for giving me the best explanation of the aforementioned Mogul, which confectioners call the “starch Mogul,” or simply, “the Mogul.” The Mogul is the machine that makes marshmallow eggs — “or the bunnies, or whatever,” my informant said.

What a starch Mogul does, in part, is what in the confectionary trade is called “starch molding.” Starch Moguls come in many sizes, some as long as 60 feet and some no longer than 20 feet. The size of the Mogul is determined by the size of the candy-making operation.

You can think of the Mogul, my informant offered, “as sort of a big, noisy robot.” Before World War II, starch Moguls were not fully mechanized. Workers placed the starch-filled trays onto the molding line and took them off and stacked them. “Over the years, of course,” she said, “they’ve improved.”

The Mogul is fitted out with series of trays about two inches deep, called “starch trays.” The Mogul fills the trays with cornstarch. “It’s regular cornstarch, called ‘molding starch,’ ” my informant Said. Scrapers on the Mogul come down and smooth the cornstarch flat. Next, the Mogul’s printing board, to which are affixed rows of plaster models of the marshmallow egg, is pressed into the cornstarch. When the printing board is lifted, the cornstarch has been impressed with rows of the hollowed-out egg shapes.

Meanwhile, in what candymakers speak of as “the kitchen,” what they call “slurry” is cooking. For chocolate makers, the melted chocolate and its additives is the slurry; for marshmallow makers, like Melster’s, the mix of corn syrup, gelatin, sugar, and starch is the slurry.

The slurry, cooked into a soft marshmallow creme, this second voice explained, goes through pipes in the kitchen into a hopper on the Mogul. A pump on the Mogul pumps the marshmallow slurry into the egg-shaped impressions that the

Mogul made in the starch molding boards.

“Once the little marshmallow eggs get cool, the molding trays are turned out over a sieve. Blowers on the Mogul blow away the cornstarch. Then, the molded eggs come down a chute to the belt-line downstairs, and the girls standing by the line brush any starch off them that’s left.

“Downstairs, the eggs stay on the belt and get coated with chocolate by what they call the ‘enrober.’ The enrober pours chocolate out of pipes. Then the chocolate-covered eggs get run through a cooling tunnel, and after they’re cool, they’re packaged.

“When we’re making marshmallow rabbits, when the rabbits come down the belt, the girls put the rabbits in a tray. The chocolate eggs you’ve been asking me about, the girls pack them up 12 to a thing that looks exactly like an egg carton you’d get at the grocery store.”

She added that she didn’t want me to think that all they made at Melster’s was Easter candy. “We make the circus peanuts, peanut butter kisses, and an awful lot of taffy.”

I asked if she ate much candy. “Lots of times when a new season starts, 1 will eat some, but then, after a week or so, you get tired of it and you don’t eat any more.”

My informant at Melster’s did not know why the Mogul was called a Mogul or why the word “Mogul” is always capitalized. “It just is,” she said emphatically.

I called Winkler & Dunnebier, an outfit in Kansas that makes its Moguls in Germany and sells them worldwide. I spoke with Harty Kranz. “Nobody knows,” said Mr. Kranz, “why they’re called Moguls. Everybody wonders. I believe the term was coined by an outfit called National Equipment. But I’ve asked National Equipment guys and they’re not sure either why they call it a Mogul.

“We built our first Mogul in 1920.1 think we were the first to build them. It was hand fed. All the new Moguls are computerized, and the Mogul does just about all the candy-making process. We sell four or five a year. A Mogul with everything on it will sell for about $ 1.2 million.”

Like the Mogul, the jellybean’s exact origin is unknown. Jellybeans (and gumdrops) are thought to descend from Turkish delight, a fruit jelly flavored with attar of roses, made in Asia as early as 1000 B.C. Turkish delight had to wait 7000 years to acquire its sugar shell and transmogrify into a jellybean. This transmogrification was made possible in the mid-17th Century when French confectioners developed a process called “panning.” In panning, candymakers filled a bowl with almonds and rocked the bowl until sugar and syrup coated the almonds. The result was called Jordan almonds. At some point in the mid- 1880s, in the United States, a candymaker figured out how to pan a Turkish delight-like filling and shaped his result to resemble a bean. Thus, the jellybean.

The earliest extant printed mention of jellybeans is an 1861 advertisement by William Schrafft of Boston that urged citizens to send jellybeans to Union soldiers. By the 1880s jellybeans had joined horehound, barley water drops, jujubes, licorice whips, jawbreakers, and gumdrops in the glass apothecary jars that lined candy store shelves. Another 50 years passed before jellybeans became the eggs laid by the Easter bunny for tucking into Easter baskets.

The Herman Goelitz Candy Company, family-owned and operated, is now in its fifth generation of candy-making. Albert and Gustav Goelitz left Germany for the United States in 1867. Two years later, they opened the Goelitz Brothers Candy Company, first in Cincinnati, Ohio, and later in Belleville, Illinois, selling handmade candies from a horse-drawn cart. Albert’s and Gustav’s sons, Adolph and Gustav, Jr., continued in the candy business, building a plant in North Chicago in 1914. Their specialty was a chocolate-covered butter cream they called “Mellocremes” and the tiny triangular candy called “candy corn.”

The brothers marketed the latter with a rooster logo, under the motto “Worth Crowing About.” When I talked with Peter Cain, vice president of sales and marketing at the Herman Goelitz Candy Company, he said, “We believe we were the first company to make candy corn.”

In 1922, Gustav’s grandson Herman, who had parted amicably from the family business and headed to California, started the Herman Goelitz Candy Company factory in Oakland. Candy com became the staple, too, of the Oakland company. But they also made jellybeans.

I said to Mr. Cain that many candy companies seem to be privately held and family-owned and are now being run by the third or fourth generation. That candy seems to survive depression and recession, he said, has tended to keep candy companies in families.

But the dental profession’s assault on candy, said Mr. Cain, was hard on business. “In the ’70s, before the dental people hit it, candy consumption was about 24 pounds per capita. When I started in the industry 12 years ago, it was 18 pounds and it has been as low as 16.”

Consumption, Mr. Cain said, had been on the rise the past three years. According to Candy Industry magazine, 1993 per capita consumption level was 22.2 pounds, a full pound higher than in 1992. Candy Industry notes that the candy industry has a “25 by ’95” campaign, aimed at raising per capita candy consumption to 25 pounds by 1995.

We returned to jellybeans. “The traditional jellybean,” Mr. Cain explained, “when you cut it open and look inside, you will find a no-color center made of corn syrup and sugar, and that’s basically it, that’s the standard bean. When you look at the shell, you’ll see a fairly thick layer of sugar and corn syrup and then a thin layer of color on the outside. In that outside layer there’s some flavor — orange for an orange bean, lemon for a yellow bean. So, basically what you have is a layer of flavored sugar around a clear, unflavored jelly center. It is pretty much like eating a sugar cube, as far as flavor is concerned.”

In 1965, Goelitz’s Oakland factory began turning out a jellybean that was flavored and colored in the middle. “We created,” said Mr. Cain, “a mini-pectin jellybean, one-third the size of a regular jellybean, and we flavored the center and the entire shell. This gave quite a bit more fruit flavor than the traditional bean.”

In 1967, when then-California Governor Ronald Reagan gave up pipe-smoking, he began eating this Goelitz pectin mini-jellybean. Governor Reagan liked the bean so much that he wrote to the company, “They have become such a tradition with our administration that it’s gotten to the point where we can hardly start a meeting or make a decision without passing around ajar of jellybeans.” In 1976, shortly after Herman Goelitz’s grandson, Herman Goelitz Rowland, became president of the Oakland firm, a Los Angeles nut distributor asked Rowland if he could make a jellybean with natural flavorings. The Goelitz candymakers went to work. Mr. Cain said, “We took that smaller-sized mini-pectin bean and created what we’ve called since the Jelly Belly. We said no to pectin. We couldn’t use pectin because pectin is fruit-based. We wanted to make deep flavors, like chocolate pudding, and use real ingredients for flavoring to make the beans taste closer to the real product. So, with chocolate, for instance, we used real chocolate, cornstarch, and corn syrup to make the center, and then to make the outside, we used cornstarch and syrup and sugar, flavor, and color. We made this new bean one-third the size of the traditional bean and we put a special shape to it, made it a kidneyshaped bean rather than the egg-shaped bean. The little kidney-shaped bean was nicer to eat, it wasn’t such a clump of candy in your mouth. Your teeth get right into the center of the bean, and you taste the flavor all the way through. So, that was the birth of the Jelly Belly. That was 1976.

“With Jelly Bellys, we started with 8 flavors. Today we make 40, in our official lineup.”

By 1976’s end, Jelly Belly beans were being sold throughout the U.S. So many jellybean eaters, including Governor Reagan, liked the new bean that Goelitz’s was unable to meet consumer demand. The Chicago Goelitz company and the Oakland branch joined together, with both factories turning out beans. Then, in 1986, Goelitz opened a second site 45 miles north of San Francisco, in Fairfield.

Mr. Cain had promised to tell me how Jelly Bellys were made. “In the old days,” he said, “when they made one flavor center for all the beans, you could kick jellybeans out in three or four days. It takes seven to ten days to make a Jelly Belly.”

Like Melster’s in Wisconsin, Goelitz’s uses Moguls. The Jelly Belly Mogul is programmed to prepare mold boards with 1260 Jelly Belly impressions per board. In the kitchen, said Mr. Cain, “we make a slurry, with sugar, corn syrup, and cornstarch as basic ingredients. We add flavor and color. The slurry pours down through pipes onto prepared mold boards, filling the impressions. So, day one is depositing.

“Day two is a stay in the drying room to solidify. Day three, we have a finished Jelly Belly center. We take it back to the Mogul and turn the molding tray over, put that bean center into the belly of the machine. Mechanical brushes clean off starch. Once that’s happened, we put on light granulated sugar so the centers don’t stick together. Toward the end of day three, we move the beans to a room set at a 70-degree temperature and 50 percent humidity, perfect for making candy. The beans stay there in wooden trays for a day, sometimes two.

“Then when we make the shell, we get into what we call ‘the art of candy-making as opposed to the science.’ The center’s made by science, the shell is art.

“Upstairs, we cook another slurry. Downstairs, we pour the centers into the rotating pans we call ‘engrossing pans.’ Workers pour the slurry out of pitchers down onto the centers. Then, they sprinkle the centers with granulated sugar. Then the centers roll in the engrossing pans for about ten minutes, or until the first pouring of slurry dries. Then, they begin again, pour slurry, sprinkle sugar, ten minutes in the engrossing pans. We go through that process at least four times. If you looked at a Jelly Belly shell under a microscope, you could see the four layers.

“Then, they sprinkle powdered sugar over the beans and set them aside for another day, sometimes two, depending on the flavor. The flavors that use citric acids have to have more drying time.

“When we are up to day six or seven, we are finally ready to polish the beans. We use carnauba wax, an FDA-approved wax. We pour that lovely wax over the beans and let it run for about 20 minutes. The wax is going to keep the moisture inside the bean.

“Next, we’re going to put on a clear confectioner’s glaze. At this point we’re close to having a beautiful, jewel-like Jelly Belly; the product is 90 percent done. We let it wait another day to dry the glaze.

“Finally, we pour the beans into a revolving cylinder and screen out doubles. We call those doubles the ‘Belly Flops’ and sell them in the candy store here at the factory. After the screening, the beans go onto a conveyor belt. Our candymakers stand by the belt and view every bean as it goes by, to make sure that each bean has the right shape and color. We switch workers every 90 minutes.

“After that, the Jelly Belly’s ready to be packed into cases and go out. We can make 100,000 pounds of beans a day, and there are roughly 400 beans in a pound. So that’s a lot of beans.”

On every Jelly Belly package the company prints its toll-free telephone number— 1-800-JB-BEANS. “last year we answered the phone 26,000 times. Seventy percent of it is, ‘Where can I buy Jelly Belly in my area?’ or ‘Where can I buy a certain flavor?’ But in many calls, we have actual conversations with consumers. Not infrequently, they give us wonderful ideas for flavors. Our buttered popcorn, for instance, now our number three seller, came from a consumer rather than from the ivory tower within.” Mr. Cain added that they’d also had some odd suggestions for flavors, the most peculiar being okra.

For Easter, Mr. Cain said, “We make a spring pastel mix — cotton candy pink, lemon yellow, ice blue mint, tangerine.” About 33 percent of the Goelitz jellybean business occurs at Easter. “So,” said Mr. Cain, “we get that nice bump for the Easter season.”