Boiled sweets

The most serious problem with curcumin is instability to light. One recommendation is that curcumin should not be used in products that are exposed to light unless the moisture content is very low. A confectionery product that fits this description is boiled sweets. The heat stability of curcumin is sufficiently good that it can withstand 140°C for 15 min in a boiled sweet mass. 

Chemically, crocin is the digentiobioside of crocetin. It is one of the few water-soluble carotenoids to produce a bright yellow shade in water. Unfortunately, crocin is bleached by sulfur dioxide levels above 50 ppm. The heat stability of crocin is good enough to use it in boiled sweets. 

NP Boley, NT Crosby, P Roper, L Somers. Determination of indigo carmine in boiled sweets and similar confectionery products. Analyst 106 710-713, 1981. 

Boiled sweets Jasmine-like, herbal and floral Lord (2003)... 

There are many other clever applications of enzymes in the chemical industry. For example, the soft centres of some hard boiled sweets contain a minute quantity of an enzyme. It slowly reacts to soften the sweet from the centre outwards and so causes the centre of the sweet to be soft and chewy. 

Unlike chocolate confectionery, sugar confectionery is free of legal definitions. Terms such as pastille or lozenge although they have an understood meaning, at least to those in the trade, are sometimes applied to products that are not strictly within that understood meaning, e.g. there are products that are sold as pastilles but which are, in fact, boiled sweets. Butterscotch must contain butter, but gums do not have to contain any gum. 

Fats are chemically triglycerides and can be regarded as the esters produced by the reaction of fatty acids with the trihydric alcohol glycerol. In practice, oils and fats are the product of biosynthesis. Some sugar confectionery contains oils or fats whereas other products, e.g. boiled sweets, are essentially fat-free. The traditional fat used in sugar confectionery is milk fat, either in the form of butter, cream, whole milk powder or condensed milk. Milk fat can only be altered by fractionating it. and while this is perfectly possible technically, there must be sufficient commercial and technical benefits to make it worthwhile. One problem with fractionation operations is that both the desirable and the undesirable fractions have to be used. 

Sugar-free boiled sweets Stabiliser A new use but as a minor ingredient. The high molecular weight of the gum prevents cold flow... 

Glassy materials are common in a number of areas, both natural and man-made. The humble boiled sweet is an example of a sugar glass (Figure 6.1). 

The water content of the finished product depends upon the cooking temperature, and as just mentioned in the previous section making stable boiled sweets depends upon obtaining a product with a low moisture... 

In making boiled sweets, the avoidance of Maillard class browning reactions is important. Although the necessary low moisture contents can be achieved by boiling under atmospheric pressure the resulting product would be an unacceptable brown colour with a caramelised flavour. The process of making boiled sweets can therefore be summarised as follows ... 

On a small scale the dissolving and vacuum boiling are carried out in a steam-heated vacuum pan. An advance on this would be to use an open pan to dissolve the sugar and then to feed this to two vacuum pans. The vacuum-cooked mass is then poured onto a cooled metal slab and the mass is turned in on itself to cool the middle (Figure 6.4). Glucose syrup-based boiled sweets form a cool skin on the outside. This means that they can be manipulated by hand. Because of this skin it is necessary to fold the inside of the mass to the outside to cool it. When the mass has cooled sufficiently the colour and flavour may be added and kneaded in,... 

Figure 6.5 Ruffinati boiled sweet kneading machine...

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