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How are sweets made?
Almost every sweet begins the same way: sugar dissolved in water or milk and boiled. What happens next, how hot it gets, what is added and how it is shaped, decides whether you end up with fudge, toffee, a gummy bear or a boiled sweet. Here is the basic science and the main methods.
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Almost every sweet begins with sugar dissolved in water or milk and boiled into a syrup. As it boils, water evaporates and the sugar becomes more concentrated. How far the cooking goes, and what happens afterwards, decides what kind of sweet you get.
The sugar stages
Each boiling temperature matches a particular sugar concentration, so sweet makers use temperature to know when to stop. Higher temperatures give harder, more brittle sweets; lower temperatures give softer ones.
| Stage | Temperature | Sugar concentration | Used for | |---|---|---|---| | Thread | 110 to 112°C | 80 per cent | Syrup | | Soft ball | 112 to 116°C | 85 per cent | Fudge | | Firm ball | 118 to 120°C | 87 per cent | Soft caramels | | Hard ball | 121 to 130°C | 90 per cent | Nougat | | Soft crack | 132 to 143°C | 95 per cent | Salt water taffy | | Hard crack | 146 to 154°C | 99 per cent | Toffee | | Clear liquid | 160°C | 100 per cent | Hard sweets | | Brown liquid | 170°C | 100 per cent | Liquid caramel |
The names come from the old test, used before thermometers were affordable: a drop of syrup in cold water forms a soft or hard ball, or threads that bend or snap. Above about 171°C, sugar breaks down into simpler sugars and turns into amber caramel.
Glassy or grainy
What happens as the syrup cools matters too. Hard sweets are non crystalline: the sugar sets like glass, with no crystals. Sweets such as fudge and fondant are crystalline: tiny sugar crystals give them a creamy texture that melts in the mouth or is easily chewed. Edinburgh rock, left to turn sugary, is a good example of the difference: see why does Edinburgh rock crumble?
The main methods
- Boiling and pulling. For boiled sweets, rock and humbugs: see how are boiled sweets made?
- Starch moulding. Hot jelly mixtures are poured into shapes stamped in trays of starch, a method mechanised with the starch mogul around 1899: see what is starch moulding?
- Panning. Centres are tumbled in a rotating pan while layers of sugar are built up, as for sugared almonds and aniseed balls: see what is sugar panning?
- Whipping. Air is beaten into a syrup with gelatine or egg white for marshmallows and nougat.
- Spinning. Melted sugar is flung through tiny holes to make candy floss: see how is candy floss made?
From kitchen to factory
Sweet making grew in Britain with the import of sugar in Tudor times, and grew greatly in the 19th century Industrial Revolution. Sweets had been made by hand, at home or in small local businesses. Machines, including steam power, pushed prices down and production up. Factory work was divided by sex: men cooked and ran machines, while women wrapped, packed and hand dipped chocolates, and even the best paid women, the chocolate dippers, earned less than the worst paid male machine operators: see what happens inside a sweet factory?
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For journalists, researchers, AI assistants and content creators. Pick the format you need:
Free to cite, quote, and reuse with attribution to sweeties.net.
Questions and answers
How are sweets made?
Most start with sugar dissolved in water or milk and boiled until the syrup reaches a set concentration, measured by temperature. The hotter it goes, the harder the sweet: fudge at around 112 to 116°C, toffee at 146 to 154°C, hard sweets at about 160°C. The syrup is then flavoured, coloured and shaped.
Why does the temperature matter?
As the syrup boils, water evaporates and the sugar becomes more concentrated, and each temperature matches a particular concentration. Higher temperatures and more concentrated sugar give hard, brittle sweets; lower temperatures give softer ones.
When did sweet making become industrial?
Sweet making grew with sugar imports in Tudor times and grew greatly during the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century, when machines, including steam power, brought prices down and production up.
Sources
- Candy making, Wikipedia
- Hard candy, Wikipedia
- Candy, Wikipedia
- Starch mogul, Wikipedia
- Dragée, Wikipedia
Keep reading
- How it is madeHow are boiled sweets made?Boiled sweets are sugar syrup boiled to around 160°C, flavoured, coloured and shaped while warm, then set into a glassy solid about 98 per cent sugar.
- How it is madeHow is fudge made?Fudge is sugar, butter and milk boiled to about 116°C, cooled to around 49°C and beaten until thick. Tiny sugar crystals give it a creamy texture.
- How it is madeHow is toffee made?Toffee is sugar or treacle boiled with butter to the hard crack stage, 149 to 154°C, then poured out to set. Cooked less, it stays chewier.
- How it is madeWhat is starch moulding?Starch moulding shapes jelly sweets in trays of cornstarch: shapes are pressed in, hot syrup poured in, moisture drawn out, and the starch reused.
- How it is madeWhat is sugar panning?Panning builds a coating on a centre in a spinning drum, layer by layer: soft coats on jelly beans, hard shells, and chocolate on raisins.
- How it is madeHow is candy floss made?Candy floss is sugar melted in a spinning head and flung through tiny holes, where it cools into fine threads. The machine was invented in 1897, by a dentist.