Candy making
Candy is made by dissolving sugar in water or milk to form a syrup, which is boiled until it reaches the desired concentration or starts to caramelize.
Candy making and consumption increased due to the importation of sugar into Britain during the Tudor period.
Candy had previously been made by hand, either occasionally at home or by specialists in small, local businesses.
[3] Candy was considered sweet and dainty, so making it at home, giving it away to friends, and perhaps selling small amounts in the local area, conformed with the Western gender roles for women of the time.
[3] Most women making and selling candy did so only seasonally or for a little extra money; they rarely earned enough to support themselves or their families.
[3] Men and boys were employed for cooking or operating machinery, putting them at higher risk of injury or death.
The best-paid women were chocolate dippers, yet the wages of these skilled and experienced female workers were almost always lower than that of the worst-paid male machine operators.
Hard candy recipes variously call for syrups of sucrose, glucose, or fructose.
A candy thermometer is more convenient, but has the drawback of not automatically adjusting for local conditions such as altitude, as the cold water test does.
Once the syrup reaches 171 °C (340 °F) or higher, the sucrose molecules break down into many simpler sugars, creating an amber-colored substance known as caramel.
[9] Typical machines used to make cotton candy include a spinning head enclosing a small bowl into which granulated sugar is poured.
[10] After the product builds up on the inside walls of the larger bowl, a stick, cone, or hands are inserted, upon which the sugar strands are gathered.
Chocolatiering, the preparing of confections from chocolate, involves the techniques of tempering, molding and sculpting.
[17] As of 2022[update], factory-based food batchmakers, which includes candy makers working in factories, earn about US $36,000 per year in the US.
