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What is starch moulding?
Gummy sweets can be made not in metal moulds but in trays of powder. The starch mogul, invented around 1899, turned this into a factory process. Here is how starch moulding works, why starch is used, and how the machine changed sweet making.
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A starch mogul is a machine that makes shaped sweets or sweet centres from syrups or gels, such as gummy sweets. Instead of metal or silicone moulds, it uses trays of starch as the moulds.
How starch moulding works
- Fill the trays. Trays are filled with cornstarch.
- Print the shapes. The shapes are stamped into the starch, leaving hollows. Moulding starch is designed to take a clean print and to hold the shape until the sweet mixture goes in.
- Deposit. The hot syrup or gel is poured into the hollows.
- Dry and set. The filled trays are left to set. During this drying, known as stoving, the starch absorbs moisture from the sweets.
- Demould. Once the sweets have set, they are removed from the trays and the surrounding starch is cleaned off, for example with suction and blowing nozzles.
- Recycle the starch. The starch is recycled for the next batch.
Why starch?
Moulding starch does several jobs at once. It holds the printed shape and it draws moisture out of the sweets while they set. One maker of moulding starch produces it from maize and blends it with oil to reduce dusting and to stop the starch sticking to the printing mould. A little starch can remain on the finished sweets: see why are jelly babies covered in powder?
What is made this way
Moguls are used for gelatine fruit gums, starch and pectin jellies, and even fondant and foam sweets: see starch jelly sweets explained
A machine that changed the factory
Starch moguls were invented around 1899 and were in common use within the next two decades. Early machines were built from wood, later ones from steel. Before them, all of the steps were done by hand, so the machines reduced the number of jobs in sweet factories and lowered the cost of making sweets.
They also made factories safer. Starch rooms used to have dangerously high levels of starch in the air, which workers breathed in and which caused respiratory illnesses. By reducing the amount of starch in the air, moguls also greatly reduced the risk of dust explosions and fire.
Our pick and mix includes golden bears, cola bottles and Jelly Babies.
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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
What is a starch mogul?
A machine that makes shaped sweets or sweet centres from syrups or gels. It fills trays with cornstarch, stamps the shapes into it, pours in the liquid sweet mixture, and later lifts out the set sweets so the starch can be reused.
Why are jelly sweets made in starch?
The starch holds the printed shape until the hot mixture is poured in, and during drying it absorbs moisture from the sweets. Moulding starch for this job is made from maize and blended with oil to reduce dust.
How did the starch mogul change sweet making?
Before moguls, every step was done by hand. The machines cut the number of jobs and lowered costs, and by reducing the starch dust in the air they also cut the risk of lung disease and dust explosions.
Sources
- Starch mogul, Wikipedia
- MOULDING Starch, Tate and Lyle
- MOGUL technology, Confectionery Production, January 2017
- Gummy candy, Wikipedia
Keep reading
- Diet, allergens and labelsStarch jelly sweets explainedStarch can set a jelly sweet without gelatine, as in Turkish delight, and trays of starch shape gummies. What that means for vegans, and why they firm up.
- How it is madeHow are gummy bears made?Gummy bears are a hot mix of sugar, glucose syrup, starch, gelatine and flavours poured into bear shapes stamped in starch and left overnight to set.
- How it is madeHow are jelly babies made?Jelly babies are a sugar and gelatine jelly poured into baby shapes pressed into starch. The starch helps release them, and some stays on as dusting.
- How it is madeHow are wine gums made?Wine gums are firm, chewy gums of glucose syrup, sugar, starch and gelatine, moulded in five shapes stamped with wine names. Despite the names, no wine.
- Questions people askWhy are Jelly Babies covered in powder?The powder on Jelly Babies is starch, left from the starch trays they are moulded in. It stops them sticking. Australian ones usually come without it.
- How it is madeHow are sweets made?Most sweets start as sugar syrup boiled to a set temperature, from about 112°C for fudge to 160°C for hard sweets. The stages, the methods and some history.