Lollipops

Lollipops are hard sweets mounted on a stick, to be licked or sucked rather than bitten. They are made much like other boiled sweets, cooked until almost all the water is gone, then shaped and pressed onto sticks: see how are lollipops made?

A sweet on a stick

Sweets like lollipops go back to the Middle Ages, when the nobility would eat boiled sugar with the help of sticks or handles. The word itself is older than the modern sweet: the English lexicographer Francis Grose recorded lollipop in 1796. One suggestion is that it comes from lolly, a word for the tongue, and pop, a slap.

The racehorse story

A book called Food for Thought: Extraordinary Little Chronicles of the World credits George Smith of New Haven, Connecticut, who began making large hard sweets on sticks in 1908. The story goes that he named them after a racehorse of the day called Lolly Pop, and he trademarked the name lollipop in 1931. With Grose's dictionary entry more than a century older, the racehorse tale explains at most one maker's use of the name, not the word.

Chupa Chups and Dalí

By 1958 the Spanish confectioner Enric Bernat had taken full control of an apple jam company, Granja Asturias, and in 1961 he renamed it Chupa Chups, from the Spanish verb chupar, to suck. In 1969 the surrealist painter Salvador Dalí designed its logo. In 1995 Chupa Chups became the first sweet sent to the Mir space station, and since 2006 the company has belonged to the Italian and Dutch group Perfetti Van Melle: see sweets in space

What is in them

The UK retailer The Candy King lists several Chupa Chups recipes.

• Cola. Sugar, glucose syrup, lactic, malic and citric acids, flavourings and caramelised sugar syrup. No milk is listed.
• Strawberry and cream. Sugar, glucose syrup, whey powder, fruit puree from fifteen fruits (3 per cent), skimmed milk powder (2 per cent), inulin, salt, flavouring and beetroot colour.
• Cocoa, vanilla and caramel. Sugar, glucose syrup, whey powder, skimmed milk powder, inulin, salt, cocoa powder and extract, flavouring, and curcumin and ammonia caramel as colours.

So in these recipes the cola lollipops are milk free, while the creamy flavours contain milk: see milk in sweets

Safety

Lollipops are hard sweets, so the usual care with hard sweets and young children applies: see hard sweets and young children

In our pick and mix

We do not sell lollipops, but we do sell Pear Drops and Sherbet Lemons by the 100 g. Each card opens up to show the full ingredients and allergens for the sweets we actually stock.

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