Boiled Sweets

Boiled Sweets

Boiled sweets are hard confectioneries made by boiling sugar and then crystallizing it, and is the same product that is known in the Unites States as candies. Sweets can be chocolate based or non-chocolate based; and the non-chocolate candies can be of the boiled sweet variety. Non-chocolate candies can basically be of two types, hard candies and soft candies with the difference being the degrees of crystallization (or boiling) of the sugar. Soft sugar candies are also known as fondants. Fondants are used to make fancy candies like chocolate creams.

Sweetmeats are the earliest known confectionery. Sweetmeats have existed for a long time in Asia and Middle East and date back as far as the ancient Egyptians. Candies were presumably discovered in order to curtail the bitter taste of medicine. This is the reason why before the 14^th century, confectioneries were made and sold chiefly by physicians. The boiled sweet favoured by mediaeval physicians was called sugar-plate, a sweetmeat composed of the ingredients rosewater, white sugar and gum dragon, together made into a paste.

Marzipan is one of the earliest surviving types of confectionery in Europe. The process of making marzipan involved hard nuts such as almonds, made into a paste and finally blended with sugar and the white of an egg. This confectionery, made in the Middle Ages was often stamped with epigrams and moulded into fancy shapes.

One of the earliest form of boiled sweet originating from England was a sugarplum. They were made of boiled sugar and became popular in England in the 17^th century. However, the production of boiled sweets as we now know them did not become extensively popular until the 19^th century. The display of British boiled sweets at the National Exhibition of 1851 stimulated manufacture in other countries, notably France.