On Food and Cooking

work is pulled sugar, which develops a lovely delicate satin-like opacity. The cook pulls a piece of ...

the two most common finely crystalline candies, whose nature is to dissolve to a creamy consistency on ...

cook beats it continuously for about 15 minutes, until crystallization is complete. The texture of these can ...

sprayed with a concentrated sucrose syrup, whose moisture evaporates and leaves behind tightly interlocked, ...

Aerated Candies: Marshmallow, Nougat Candies with a light, chewy texture are made by combining a sugar syr ...

bubble walls, and this reinforcement, together with the viscosity of the syrup, stabilizes the foam structure. ...

essence of wintergreen and you get something startling: a candy that seems to give off sparks ...

it absorbs the invisible ultraviolet rays and re-radiates them in the visible part of the light spectrum. It ...

translucent, and traditionally flavored with essence of rose. Licorice Licorice is usually made with ...

seem more intense. Gelatin is degraded in high heat, so a concentrated solution is added to th ...

Fizzy and Crackling Candies Candies that fizz and crackle in the mouth were developed in the 19th centu ...

sugar syrup with carbon dioxide gas, then chill it down quickly and under pressure to lock the gas in ...

also gives us “masticate.” Europeans and North Americans chewed the relatively harsh resin of spruce trees; ...

was introduced to chicle from Central and South America. Chicle is a latex, a milky, water-based plant ...

found in auto tires — and polyvinyl acetate — in adhesives and paints — though some brands still con ...

by the growth of bacteria or molds. Their flavor can be degraded, however, by the oxidation and consequent ra ...

and roasting. Its consistency is like no other food’s: hard and dry at room temperature, melting and creamy in t ...

energy and moisture. It appears that the first people to cultivate the tree were the Olmecs of the southern ...

little, but from time to time a liquor prepared from cocoa, and of an aphrodisiac nature, as we were t ...

has a more complicated history. The Aztec (Nahuatl) word for cocoa-water was cacahuatl, but the ...