Candy

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Candy, also called sweets or lollies, is a confection that features sugar as a principal ingredient. The category,
called sugar confectionery, encompasses any sweet confection, including chocolate, chewing gum, and sugar
candy. Vegetables, fruit, or nuts which have been glazed and coated with sugar are said to be candied.
Physically, candy is characterized by the use of a significant amount of sugar, or, in the case of sugar-free
candies, by the presence of sugar substitutes. Unlike a cake or loaf of bread that would be shared among many
people, candies are usually made in smaller pieces. However, the definition of candy also depends upon how
people treat the food. Unlike sweet pastries served for a dessert course at the end of a meal, candies are
normally eaten casually, often with the fingers, as a snack between meals. Each culture has its own ideas of
what constitutes candy rather than dessert. The same food may be a candy in one culture and a dessert in
another.
[1]
Definition and classification
Candy is a sweet food product.
Sugar candies include hard candies, caramels, marshmallows, taffy, and other candies whose principal ingredient
is sugar. Commercially, sugar candies are often divided into groups according to the amount of sugar they
contain and their chemical structure.
[2]
Chocolate is sometimes treated as a separate branch of confectionery.
[3]
In this model, chocolate candies like
chocolate candy bars and chocolate truffles are included. Hot chocolate or other cocoa-based drinks are
excluded, as is candy made from white chocolate. However, when chocolate is treated as a separate branch, it
also includes confections whose classification is otherwise difficult, being neither exactly candies nor exactly
baked goods, like chocolate-dipped foods, tarts with chocolate shells, and chocolate-coated cookies.
Candies can be classified into noncrystalline and crystalline types. Noncrystalline candies are homogeneous and
may be chewy or hard; they include hard candies, caramels, toffees, and nougats. Crystalline candies
incorporate small crystals in their structure, are creamy that melt in the mouth or are easily chewed; they
include fondant and fudge.
[4]
History
Between the 6th and 4th centuries BCE, the Persians, followed by the Greeks, discovered the people in India
and their "reeds that produce honey without bees". They adopted and then spread sugar and sugarcane
agriculture.
[5]
Sugarcane is indigenous to tropical South and Southeast Asia, while the word sugar is derived
from the Sanskrit word Saccharum.
[6]
Pieces of sugar were produced by boiling sugarcane juice in ancient India
and consumed as Khanda, dubbed as the original candy.
[7]
Before sugar was readily available, candy was based on honey.
[8]
Honey was used in Ancient China, Middle
East, Egypt, Greece and the Roman Empire to coat fruits and flowers to preserve them or to create forms of
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