About Old-Fashioned Candy Making

Before candy became commercially available it was produced at home using boiled sugar syrups as a base. Old-fashioned candy makers cooked hard candies, taffy, toffee and candy-coated nuts. Other old-fashioned candy makers made molded marzipan candies and candies made of dried fruits. While chocolate was discovered during the Spanish conquest of South America, it was too expensive for most people, so it was not an ingredient in old-fashioned candy.

  1. History

    • The first candy was made in ancient Egypt from a mixture of honey, fruit and spices. The first to process sugar and then use it to make candy were the Arabs in the 11th century A.D. European soldiers returning home from the Crusades in the Middle East introduced the delicacies more widely. Then, after the discovery of the Americas, Europeans had a source of sugar on their colonial sugarcane plantations, so sugar-based candies became more available. Chocolate candy was unknown outside of South America until after the Spanish conquests there, so chocolate is the most recent and probably the most popular candy ingredient.

    Types

    • Before the Industrial Revolution, candy making was a homemaker's task. She made a variety of sugar-based sweets such as rock candies; taffy; toffee; brittle; and candied fruits, flowers and herbs. Some of these were used medicinally to calm upset stomachs and soothe sore throats. These medicinal candies included horehound drops, peppermint drops, candied violet root, candied ginger root and licorice. She would make the candies right after harvesting the herbs so that her medicine chest would be filled in time for winter. Other old-fashioned candies included sugar-coated nuts, called comfits, as well as molded marzipan and dried fruits.

    Expert Insight

    • Experienced candy makers do not need a thermometer to know how the syrup will behave. They can test it with a glass of cold water. When sugar is boiled, it melts into syrup, which thickens as it cooks. As it thickens it goes through a series of stages that are familiar to candy makers. When a candy maker drops a small amount of syrup that is between 234 and 240 degrees Fahrenheit into a glass of very cold water, it forms a soft round ball. This is the soft-ball stage, which is used when making fudge and fondant. Syrup between 244 and 248 degrees forms a firmer ball, the correct consistency to make caramel candy; syrup between 250 and 266 degrees forms a hard ball, which will make marshmallows. Taffy results from sugar at the soft-crack stage, between 270 and 290 degrees. When sugar that is between 300 and 310 degrees is dropped into cold water, it solidifies. This is the hard-crack stage, used to make hard candy. Two more stages make caramel: At 320 to 335 degrees, the light caramel stage, the syrup will be the color of honey; at the final, dark caramel stage, up to 350 degrees, the syrup will be darker, sticky and brown. Both the caramel stages are used for glazes and to coat centers made from other candies. Whether the syrup starts as sugar, honey, molasses or maple syrup, it will pass through these stages as it heats.

    Effects

    • Rock candies and candied fruits, flowers and herbs are made from sugar that has been boiled until it reaches the hard-ball stage. Brittles and toffees are made from syrup that has reached the hard-crack stage. Other sugar-based candies such as fondants don't have to reach the soft-ball stage, but they do need to be beaten and kneaded before being cut or pulled into their final form. Besides these old-fashioned candies, almonds ground up into a thick paste and mixed with butter and sugar (called marzipan) can be molded like clay. Marzipan pigs, marzipan fruits and other ornaments have traditionally been made in Europe as Christmas treats.

    Considerations

    • Old-fashioned candy making gave way to commercial candy in the mid-19th century because the Industrial Revolution made the technology to mass-produce it possible. Whitman's boxed chocolates became commercially available in 1854. This was followed by Cadbury's chocolate, Wunderle's candy corn, Wrigley's gum, Tootsie Rolls and Hershey's milk chocolate bars before 1900. Because of the cheaper commercially available wide variety of candy, so many fewer people made the old-fashioned candies that the recipes disappeared from standard cookbooks. It took tremendous research by people such as Anita Pritchard, author of the 1978 "Anita Pritchard's Complete Candy Cookbook," to reintroduce old-fashioned candy recipes.