In the Richmond District in San Francisco, there exists a number of Russian/European delis that happen to sell multiple varieties of Turkish Delight. Until I moved here, I had never had the real thing. But I have had many similar candies in the U.S., usually in bar form, with a nougatey/marhmallowy consistency.
How much does American-made chewy candy owe to old/original recipies of Turkish Delight?
I'm American (from New York) and I've never heard of anything called "Turkish Delight" other than Lokum. Could you link a picture or something?
So, Turkish Delight was invented in late 18th century Turkey. It's exact origin is ambiguous, but it gained rapid popularity, not just in Turkey, but also abroad. The British, in particular, were kind of nuts for it, but no local manufacturers were able to recreate it and it was solely an import product. It was sold in a wide variety of flavors, much like a modern chocolate assortment box, and packaged in a similar way. Now, British confectionary certainly inspired American chocolatiers, so perhaps there's a link here? Unfortunately for the Turkish Delight origin theory, Cadbury's had begun producing similar commercial-scale assortment boxes for chocolates at almost exactly the same time, in volumes far exceeding that of Turkish delight. And Turkish delight was extremely uncommon in the United States (even compared to its low profile today) until the 1920s when domestic production was kickstarted by Armenian immigrants.
But hey, where do marshmallow and nougat and all of those things come from? Are they inspired by Turkish delight in some more tenuous way? Well no, not really. These were all extremely traditional confections in Europe. Nougat, or its predecessor, was introduced to Southen Europe during the Arabic conquests in the region. Marshmallows, traditionally made with actual marsh mallow sap, are incredibly ancient, records of them date back to Ancient Egypt... though modern marshmallows are an industrial product intended to imitate this older one that dates to mid-19th century France. Other common chocolate fillings like praline have similarly chronologically distant origins.
The first combination candy bar, that is, a candy bar combining chocolate with some kind of filling, was created in 1912. This was the GooGoo Cluster, and if American candy can be said to owe a debt to anything, it's this. The GooGoo Cluster is (you can still get them) nougat, marshmallow, caramel and peanuts, covered in chocolate. Until the GooGoo Cluster, nougat, marshmallows etc were typically served on their own. Some gourmet chocolatiers such as the famous Belgian Neuhaus had covered some of these ingredients in chocolate as early as the mid-19th century, but these weren't mass market products. When the GooGoo Cluster was released, was an instant hit around Nashville, where it was created. Other major candy companies reversed engineered the process and began releasing their own combination bars, shaping the American candy landscape until the modern day.