# Cough candy

**Canonical URL:** https://sweeties.net/wiki/cough-candy/
**Source:** sweeties.net, online pick and mix sweet shop

## Summary

Cough candy is a boiled sweet with a herbal flavour, sold in twists. It is a sweet, not a medicine: what is in it, and how it differs from lozenges.

## Description

Cough candy is a traditional boiled sweet with a herbal, slightly medicinal flavour, sold in individually wrapped twists. Despite the name, it is a sweet, not a medicine.
What is in it
Cough Candy, as listed by Sweets and Candy. Sugar, glucose syrup, water, flavouring, and beetroot red, E162, as a colour. The retailer describes the twists as boiled sweets with a herbal flavour, and lists them as suitable for vegetarians.
It is made like other boiled sweets, by boiling sugar and glucose syrup until almost no water is left: see how are boiled sweets made?
Sweets for the throat
The idea of a sweet to soothe the throat is very old. Sweets for the throat are thought to date back to about 1000 BC, in Egypt's Twentieth Dynasty, when they were made from honey flavoured with citrus, herbs and spices. The shape gave medicated sweets their name: a lozenge is a diamond, the original shape of cough tablets.
Britain has several sweets with that medicinal flavour. Army and Navy sweets are black liquorice and herb lozenges, often eaten in winter, and Coltsfoot Rock is flavoured with a wild plant once used for coughs: see Army and Navy sweets, Coltsfoot Rock and Victory V lozenges
Sweet or medicine?
The difference is what is inside. The cough candy recipe here contains only sugar, syrup, water, flavouring and a colour. Medicated throat lozenges contain active ingredients: some contain menthol, peppermint oil or spearmint, and others contain mild antiseptics or anaesthetics. If you need something for a sore throat, a cough candy is a sweet, not a treatment.
Safety
Cough candy is a hard boiled sweet. The NHS says not to give younger children hard foods such as boiled sweets, because of the risk of choking: see hard sweets and younger children
In our pick and mix
We do not sell cough candy, but we do sell other traditional boiled sweets, such as SW033 and SW035. Each card opens up to show the full ingredients and allergens for the sweets we actually stock.

---

_Content available under sweeties.net citation contract. AI training: yes. Search: yes. Answer-input: yes._