Science of Candy

Richard D. Ludescher
Dept. of Food Science Rutgers University

Consider These Kinds of Solid Candy

! Chocolate ! Hard Candy ! Gummi Bears

How are their physical properties similar? How different? Why?

Molecular Structure of Solid Candy

! Chocolate
! Crystalline Solid: Cocoa butter matrix

! Hard Candy
! Amorphous Solid: Sucrose solution

! Gummi Bears
! Soft Polymeric Solid: Gelatin gel

Chocolate: Theobroma cocao

?
Cocoa Liquor Sugar Cocoa Butter (Milk Powder)

Cocoa Beans

Roast & Mill

Chocolate liquor

Temper

Conch

Add cocoa butter, sugar, (milk powder, flavor)

Mold or Enrobe

Chocolate Manufacturing Process

Chocolate Processing
The conching process grinds and mixes the incompatible ingredients

Melts in Your Mouth (Not in Your Hand)

Chocolate Matrix is Crystalline Fat (Cocoa Butter)

Cocoa Butter is made of Triglycerides

Tripalmitin

Cocoa Butter Composition

! Palmitic acid (~25%)
! C16:0 16 carbon saturated fatty acid

! Stearic acid (~35%)

! C18:0 18 carbon saturated fatty acid

! Oleic acid (~35%)

! C18:1 18 carbon unsaturated fatty acid ! One cis double bond at C9

! Primarily P/StOP/St and P/StOO structures

Cocoa Butter Crystals

Proposed structures

Crystal Forms of Cocoa Butter Chocolate Tempering

Tempered chocolate

Cocoa butter is a polymorphic fat It can form six different crystal structures with different melting points and properties

Chocolate Fashion Show

Chocolate Show New York, November 8, 2005

When Chocolate Goes Bad

Chocolate Bloom
Formation of new crystals on surface

Chocolate Bloom

Tempered

Bloomed

Thermal abuse melts form V crystals Liquid fat migrates to the surface where it crystallizes into unappetizing small, polymorphic crystals of arbitrary form

Hard Candy
Saccharum officinarum

Rock Candy & Table Sugar: Crystalline Sucrose Hard Candy & Lollipops: Amorphous Glassy Sucrose

Hard Candy Recipe

Sugar: 5 cups Corn syrup: 1 cup Water: 1 cup Flavor: 1-2 teaspoons oil of peppermint, orange, anise, cinnamon, wintergreen, cloves, or spearmint, etc. Color: 1-2 drops of food coloring (if desired) Mix sugars and water, cook to hard crack stage (300F), remove from heat, add flavor, mix well, pour into molds and cool. Store in sealed container.

Glass Forms Because Crystallization is Frustrated by High Viscosity of Liquid Sugar

Properties of Amorphous Glassy Sucrose

! Solid-like
! Hard, rigid and brittle

! Liquid-like
! Can dissolve colors and flavors ! Supersatuated liquid

! Softens at high temperature: Glass transition (Tg)

! Hard & brittle below Tg ! Soft & malleable above Tg

Crystal: Long Range Molecular Order Amorphous Glass: No Long Range Order

Rose Window
Notre Dame, Paris

One of the more attractive applications of glass technology

Sugar Sculpture
American Culinary Federation National Convention, 2003

Triboluminescence
Light emission after excitation by rubbing or striking

Wintergreen (methyl salicylate)

Triboluminescence of Sucrose
(nitrogen emission)

Absorption and Fluorescence of Wintergreen

Gummi Bears
Hard Jell-O

Gummi Bear Recipe

Water Corn syrup Sucrose Gelatin Citric acid Coconut oil Carnauba wax Flavors & Colors Dissolve sugar and gelatin in boiling water, add syrup, oil and wax, mix well. Add citric acid, juice, and flavors and colors. Pour into molds. Cool. Gelatin is added at levels about 6x that used in Jello.

Gelatin has been around for millennia, Jell-O for about a century

You may be familiar with other uses for Jell-O

Sus scrofa
The source of most food gelatin

Jell-O is a Gel: A 3-D Polymer Network

Gelatin Triple Helix

The Physical Crosslinks in a Gelatin Gel

The word "candy" comes from Arabic qandi, derived from Persian qand, meaning "sugar.
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