and Confectionery
All sugar candies, whether brittle or creamy
or chewy, are essentially mixtures of two
ingredients: sugar and water. Cooks manage
to create very different textures from the same
materials by varying the relative proportions
of sugar and water, and the physical
arrangement of the sugar molecules. They
control the proportions as they cook the sugar
syrup, and they control the physical
arrangement as they cool it. Depending on
how hot the syrup gets, how quickly it cools,
and how much it’s stirred, it can solidify into
coarse sugar crystals, fine sugar crystals, or a
monolithic crystal-free mass. To a large
extent, the art of the confectioner depends on
the science of crystallization.
Setting the Sugar
Concentration:
Cooking the Syrup