How are fruit drops made?

Fruit drops are small, hard, fruit flavoured boiled sweets, often in a mix of colours. They belong to the family of drop sweets, which also includes pear drops, acid drops and lemon drops, and they are made on a machine called a drop roller: see how are pear drops made?

How drop sweets are made

The British machinery maker Loynds, which builds drop rollers, sets out the method:

1. Boil. White sugar is dissolved in water and boiled, then liquid glucose is stirred in, at about 60 parts sugar to 40 parts glucose, and the batch is heated to 146°C.
2. Pour. The hot batch is poured onto a lightly oiled cold surface.
3. Colour and flavour. Liquid colours and fruit flavours are added, often measured by syringe, and folded in like kneading dough. A batch can be divided with shears to make several colours.
4. Sharpen. For fruit flavours, powdered citric acid is sprinkled over and worked in.
5. Roll. The batch is fed as a sheet into the drop roller, whose interchangeable brass rollers are engraved with shapes such as ovals, rounds, balls, lemons, pears and flat drops.
6. Break up. Once cool, the sheet is broken with a flat scraper into individual sweets.

A motorised drop roller can make up to 125 kg an hour, and a hand turned one up to 25 kg.

Why the glucose matters

The glucose syrup in the recipe helps stop the sugar recrystallising as it cools, so the drops set clear and glassy rather than cloudy. Hard sugar sweets like these also draw moisture from the air, which is why they can turn sticky if the tin is left open: see how are boiled sweets made? Sour fruit drops can be coated with sour sanding, sugar mixed with acids: see how are sour sweets made?

Sakuma drops

Sakuma drops are Japanese hard fruit drops, flavoured with fruit juice, sold since 1908 in tins with a pull cap. They were first made by Sakuma Candy in Ikebukuro, Tokyo. Production stopped during the Second World War because of sugar shortages, and afterwards former employees set up two separate companies that both carried on making the drops, one in red tins and one in green. The original company announced in November 2022 that it would close, and it ceased operations on 20 January 2023.

In the West, Sakuma drops appear in the 1988 Studio Ghibli film Grave of the Fireflies, where a tin of the drops is a central motif, and commemorative tins featuring the film's young heroine, Setsuko, have been released several times.

Drops by any other name

Lemon drops are coated in sugar and often shaped like tiny lemons, and acid drops are made sharp with citric or tartaric acid: see lemon drops and acid drops

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