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How are sweets coloured?
Behind every red jelly and blue sherbet is a decision about when and how to add the colour. Here is how sweet makers colour different kinds of sweet, what the colours are made from, and why Victorian sweets could be downright dangerous.
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Colour is one of the first things you notice about a sweet, and makers can supply it as a liquid, a powder, a gel or a paste. When it goes in depends on how the sweet is made.
When the colour goes in
- Boiled sweets and lollipops. Colour is added after the sugar has been cooked. The machinery maker Loynds describes adding liquid colours and flavours by syringe to the hot batch on a cold, oiled slab and folding them in like dough. At Spangler, which makes Dum Dums, colour and flavour are added in a mixing bowl after cooking: see how are lollipops made?
- Striped sweets. For candy canes, the white candy and the coloured stripes are prepared separately, and the stripes are laid onto the white log on a heating table: see how are candy canes made?
- Panned sweets. For hard panned sweets, one trade guide builds up the colour in the final five or six coats of syrup, so the colour sits in the outer shell: see what is sugar panning?
- Jellies and gums. Colour is mixed into the syrup before it is poured into starch moulds: see what is starch moulding?
- Printed sweets. Love Hearts are pressed from coloured sugar powder, and then the message on the front is picked out in red food colour so it can be read: see how are message heart sweets made?
What the colours are made of
Colours in sweets are either synthetic or natural. Synthetic dyes are intense, so only tiny amounts are needed, and that often makes them cheaper. In the UK and the EU, the permitted synthetic colours sit in the range E102 to E143: see what are E numbers in sweets?
Natural colours come in four main families: carotenoids for yellows and oranges, chlorophyll for greens, anthocyanins for reds, purples and blues, and betanin, the red of beetroot. Annatto from seeds and carmine from an insect are also used. Natural blues are rare, and spirulina, an alga, has become one source of blue: see natural colours in sweets and what is spirulina doing in my sweets?
The Southampton colours
Six synthetic colours carry a warning in the UK and EU that they may have an adverse effect on activity and attention in children, after a study at the University of Southampton: see the Southampton six colours
When colours were poison
Colour has not always been safe. In the 19th century red lead and vermilion, a compound of mercury, were routinely used to colour cheese and confectionery, and sellers offered more than 80 artificial colouring agents, some invented for dyeing cloth. Many had never been tested for safety, and injuries and even deaths followed. In 1856 William Henry Perkin made mauveine, the first synthetic colour, and in 1882 German food rules banned minerals such as arsenic, copper, chromium, lead, mercury and zinc from colourings.
Why your tongue turns blue
Strong colours can stain your tongue for a while after you eat a sweet: see why do sweets change the colour of your tongue?
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Questions and answers
How are sweets coloured?
It depends on the sweet. For boiled sweets and lollipops, liquid colour is mixed into the hot, cooked candy on the slab or in a mixer. Hard panned sweets, such as sugared almonds, can get their colour in the last few coats in the pan. Jellies have colour mixed into the syrup before it is poured into moulds, and some sweets, like Love Hearts, have colour printed or picked out on top.
What are sweet colours made from?
Either synthetic dyes, which are intense and needed only in tiny amounts, or colours from plants, algae and insects, such as carotenoids, anthocyanins, beetroot red, spirulina and carmine. Some foods, such as black carrot or spirulina concentrate, are also used to colour sweets.
Were old sweets coloured with poison?
Sometimes. In the 19th century red lead and vermilion, a mercury compound, were routinely used to colour cheese and sweets, and many colours had never been tested for safety. In 1882 German food rules banned minerals such as arsenic, copper, lead and mercury from colourings.
Sources
- Food coloring, Wikipedia
- Candy recipe and drop roller process, Loynds
- How are Dum Dums made?, Spangler Candy Company
- Putting on the best confectionery coating, WorldBakers, May 2020
- Love Hearts, Wikipedia
- Candy canes, Always A Treat, National Confectioners Association
Keep reading
- Diet, allergens and labelsNatural colours in sweetsSweets are increasingly coloured with plants: spirulina for blue, black carrot for red and purple, turmeric and paprika for yellow. How they are labelled.
- Diet, allergens and labelsThe Southampton six coloursThe Southampton six are E102, E104, E110, E122, E124 and E129, synthetic colours that carry a warning about children. Each one explained.
- Questions people askWhat are E numbers in sweets?E numbers are codes for food additives, from colours to glazes. Many are natural, like vitamin C and pectin. What the numbers mean, and the rows over them.
- Questions people askWhat is spirulina doing in my sweets?Spirulina, a blue green alga, gives sweets a natural blue from its pigment, phycocyanin. Why it replaced artificial blues and has no E number.
- Questions people askWhat is carmine?Carmine, E120, is a deep red colour made from cochineal insects that live on cactus. It colours sweets, drinks and lipstick. Why vegans avoid it.
- Questions people askWhy do sweets change the colour of your tongue?Strong food colours cling to the rough upper surface of your tongue. The stain is harmless and fades by itself. Plus the 2013 study on blue dyes.