Hard Candy 101 In the mid-19th century the development of corn syrup made the mass production of hard candy possible. With some refine- ments of ingredients, equipment and technique, we use the same basics today.
John Kitt
ard candies, also known as boiled decrease of 10.3 percent over the prior year Hsweets, boiled sugar and fruit drops, (Figure 1). During this period the total sales were first introduced in England in the early of nonchocolate candy remained static at 17th century. $1.97 billion, with the decline in hard candy The basic raw material of hard candy, more than offset by a 19.3 percent increase sugar refined from the juice of the sugar- in sales of plain mints. cane, had been known since ancient times IRI data measures sales through food, but had been prohibitively expensive until drug and mass-merchandising channels and production of sugarcane in the New World does not include Wal-Mart. John Kitt retired as a colonies made refined sugar available at an The top-selling hard candy brand in 2006 research principal at affordable price. was Jolly Rancher with sales of $38.8 mil- Wrigley in 2006. He A process for extracting sugar from beets lion. had worked for Kraft was developed by the French during the (Wrigley purchased Napoleonic wars when their access to the THE STRUCTURE OF HARD CANDY the Life Savers line West Indies was cut off. The basic process of hard candy production from Kraft), Nabisco, is to boil an aqueous solution of the sugar Standard Brands, The development of corn syrup in the Knechtel Laboratories sucrose to form a supercooled, supersatu- mid-19th century made possible the mass and Geo Bassett & Co. production of hard candy by the methods rated solution with a moisture content we use today. around 2.5 percent. This glass-like substance The earliest hard candies were made by is the amorphous form of sugar and can be dropping boiled candy onto a cold table regarded as an extremely viscous liquid. through a depositing funnel. A later inno- Sucrose crystallizes very readily. If we vation was the cutting frame and then the were to attempt to make hard candy by boil- drop roller. ing a sugar solution with no other ingredi- Today, most hard candies are formed by ents, the sugar would revert to the crystal either die stamping or depositing but the form immediately when we started to drop roller is still sometimes used. manipulate the cooked batch. In hard candy terminology, recrystallization within the THE U.S. MARKET product is called graining. IRI data for the year 2006 shows sales of The sucrose molecules in hard candy are hard sugar candy totaling $241 million, a randomly distributed throughout the mass; ®
The Manufacturing Confectioner • January 2008 57