Candy & Sweet History
Candy, also called sweets or lollies, is a confection that features sugar as a principal ingredient. The category, called sugar confectionery, encompasses any sweet confection, including chocolate, chewing gum, and sugar candy. Vegetables, fruit, or nuts which have been glazed and coated with sugar are said to be candied.
Physically, candy is characterized by the use of a significant amount of sugar, or, in the case of sugar-free candies, by the presence of sugar substitutes. Unlike a cake or loaf of bread that would be shared among many people, candy is usually made in smaller pieces. However, the definition of candy also depends upon how people treat the food. Unlike sweet pastries served for a dessert course at the end of a meal, candy is normally eaten casually, often with the fingers, as a snack between meals. Each culture has its own ideas of what constitutes candy rather than dessert. The same food may be a candy in one culture and a dessert in another.
Definition and classification
Candy is a sweet food product.
Sugar candies include hard candies, soft candies, caramels, marshmallows, taffy, and other candies whose principal ingredient is sugar. Commercially, sugar candies are often divided into groups according to the amount of sugar they contain and their chemical structure.
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Comparison of sugar candies
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Kompeitō is a traditional Japanese sugar candy. When finished, it is almost 100% sugar.
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Fruit-shaped hard candy is a common type of sugar candy, containing sugar, color, flavor, and a tiny bit of water.
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Chikki are homemade nut brittles popular in India. Between the nuts or seeds is hard sugar candy.
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In Germany, Haribo gummy bears were the first gummi candy ever made. They are soft and chewy.
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Pantteri is a soft, chewy Finnish sugar candy. The colored ones are fruity, while black are salmiakki (salty liquorice-flavored).
Chocolate is sometimes treated as a separate branch of confectionery. In this model, chocolate candies like chocolate candy bars and chocolate truffles are included. Hot chocolate or other cocoa-based drinks are excluded, as is candy made from white chocolate. However, when chocolate is treated as a separate branch, it also includes confections whose classification is otherwise difficult, being neither exactly candies nor exactly baked goods, like chocolate-dipped foods, tarts with chocolate shells, and chocolate-coated cookies.
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Comparison of chocolate types
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Unsweetened baking chocolate contains no sugar.
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Bittersweet or dark chocolate contains some sugar.
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Milk chocolate contains milk and lower levels of cocoa solids.
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Because white chocolate contains no cocoa solids, it is classified as sugar confectionery instead of chocolate.
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Compound chocolate is used in place of pure chocolate to reduce costs.
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These flowers were made from modeling chocolate.
Candies can be classified into noncrystalline and crystalline types. Noncrystalline candies are homogeneous and may be chewy or hard; they include hard candies, caramels, toffees, and nougats. Crystalline candies incorporate small crystals in their structure, are creamy that melt in the mouth or are easily chewed; they include fondant and fudge.
History
A Japanese vendor selling sweets in "The Great Buddha Sweet Shop" from the Miyako meisho zue (1787)
Between the 6th and 4th centuries BCE, the Persians, followed by the Greeks, discovered the people in India and their "reeds that produce honey without bees". They adopted and then spread sugar and sugarcane agriculture.[5] Sugarcane is indigenous to tropical South and Southeast Asia, while the word sugar is derived from the Sanskrit word Sharkara.[6] Pieces of sugar were produced by boiling sugarcane juice in ancient India and consumed as Khanda, dubbed as the original candy.[7]
Before sugar was readily available, candy was based on honey.[8] Honey was used in Ancient China, Middle East, Egypt, Greece and the Roman Empire to coat fruits and flowers to preserve them or to create forms of candy.[9] Candy is still served in this form today, though now it is more typically seen as a type of garnish.
Before the Industrial Revolution, candy was often considered a form of medicine, either used to calm the digestive system or cool a sore throat. In the Middle Ages candy appeared on the tables of only the most wealthy at first. At that time, it began as a combination of spices and sugar that was used as an aid to digestive problems. Digestive problems were very common during this time due to the constant consumption of food that was neither fresh nor well balanced. Banquet hosts would typically serve these types of 'candies' at banquets for their guests. One of these candies, sometimes called chamber spice, was made with cloves, ginger, aniseed, juniper berries, almonds and pine kernels dipped in melted sugar.
The Middle English word candy began to be used in the late 13th century.
The first candy came to America in the early 18th century from Britain and France. Only a few of the early colonists were proficient in sugar work and were able to provide the sugary treats for the very wealthy. Rock candy, made from crystallized sugar, was the simplest form of candy, but even this basic form of sugar was considered a luxury and was only attainable by the rich.