The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1886-06-02
The Manufacture of Candy.

pr The word candy comes to us from
he Arabic and Persian qdnd, another
name for sugar. Candy-making is a
considerable trade in itself. The CEN
BUS of 1880 reported 1862 confection-
brs. There are eight or ten large fac
tories in New York alone, employing
perhaps a hundred people each, and
using hundred barrels or more of
sugar a week, besides quantities of glu-
tose. The "stick " candy, which
seems to be an indigenous American
product, is made of ordinary GA"
sugar, boiled down with water and lit
tie cream of tartar to prevent crystalliza-
ton. The mass is taken in patches of
about fifteen pounds to a marble table,
where it is kneaded like bread and the
favoring and coloring worked in. The
paste then goes to the pulling-hooks,
where for five or six minutes il is
pulled and twisted and repulled and re-
twisted at the hands of workman who
certainly earns his living. Thence it
returns to the marble table, at one end
of which is a metal plate, kept hot, on
which he works the candy into its final
shape. Stripes are pressed into the
batch, two feet long and a foot thick.
and it is then drawn and twisted out
till it is the proper size of the penny
stick" the right length of which is
clipped off by huge scissors. Clear
candy is not kneaded or pulled. Flat
candy is run into pans, and knife is
run across where it is to be broken into
sticks or squares. The drops, fishes
and other fancy shapes are made by
passing the paste through a machine,
which cuts and presses it TO the proper
size and shape. Lozenges are rolled
out like pie-crust, sometimes printed in
carmine with hand-stamp, and then
cut out with dies. Sugar-plums "
and sugared almonds are made in
very interesting way-by throwing the
nut, seed or other nucleus, with boiling
sugar, into great copper pans, which are
shaken by hand or revolved by ma
chinery over a hot fire. Rolled over
and over in the moist sugar, the plums
soon begin to grow, and are "polished
off, by each other, while, above,
steam-worked fans carry off the dry
dust. Gum-drops are made of gum
arabic and sugar, boiled and mixed,
seven or eight hundred pounds at
time, in huge copper steam-kettles,
whence the mixture is taken out into
smaller kettles to be favored and COL
ored The cheap gum-drops and
marsh-mallows are now made chiefly
from glucose. Cream or soft candies
are made in a simple way from sugar
mixed with cream of tartar to prevent
crystallizing. To give them their fancy
forms flat tray is filled with starch,
which is pressed into moulds by series
of plaster Paris models-a drop,
hand, face, berry, or what it may be
arranged on a long stick. Into these
starch moulds the hot cream is poured,
and then allowed to dry. Some fac
tories have as much as $4,000 pounds of
starch in this use. The drying-room is
kept at high temperature, in which
the 6 creams" soon become dry and
solid. They are then separated from
the starch by huge sleeves. If they are
to be CLOSED, they are placed in huge
tin pans and cold solution of sugar
poured over them to stand over night.
In the morning the ice of sugar on top
is broken, and the "creams " are found
coated with fine crystals. The Hquer
drops are very curious product The
syrup is mixed with brandy or favored
water, and is poured into the starch
moulds. AS it cools at the top and on
the mould, the crystals make a contin-
uous case, imprisoning the liquor
within. The adulteration of candy is
chiefly by the use of terra alba, or
white clay. This harmful stuff can be
detected by dissolving the suspected
candy in water, when the clay falls to
the bottom undissolved. An ounce
roll of cheap lozenges will sometimes
contain three-quarters of an ounce of
this injurious stuff The coloring of
candies is, for the most part, not dan
gerous, since a piece of red coloring
matter the size of gum-drop will color
5000 pounds of candy. INSCRIPTIONS
manufacturers, however, sometimes
use mineral instead of the safe veget.
able colors, and carloads of such
candy have been seized and destroyed
by the health officers in New York
For the most part, carmine and coch
meal are used for red, saffron fol
yellow, caramel or burnt sugar fol
brown, and this with carmine fo
orange. Green and blue candies are Il
be avoided These colors are uset
sometimes, however, in decorating"
surface treatment of fine candies b,
hand, in which water-color artist il
employed to do art work at wholesale
according to the model set him. A
for this purpose the proportion of col
Oring matter TO sugar is about one
millionth, the result of swallowin,
paint is not so dangerous as might b
expected. In flavoring, essential oil
are used, about pound to thousan
pounds of sugar, and this is worked i
during the boiling or kneading. Lie
orice colors and flavors both at once