I was at the ball game this weekend when my friends noticed that the park was selling cotton candy in closed plastic containers. This of course, prompted the expectation from my friends that I would answer all of their cotton candy questions; a duty we food scientists don’t take lightly. This new packaging technique is certainly a change from my childhood cotton candy memories of the fluffy, freshly-spun confection on a stick I used to eat so frequently at the circus.
Yes, I did spend a great deal of time at the circus as a child. My grandfather sat on the board for the Circus World Museum in Baraboo Wisconsin, which meant my brother and I spent our childhood summers volunteering as the kids that horses would jump over in the ring and riding elephants with women wearing overly sequined costumes, but those are all definitely stories for another time.
The closed container of cotton candy is actually a very clever way of keeping this delicate confection fresh for longer, especially in the disgustingly damp D.C. climate. If you can remember back to last week’s Candy Science Tuesday post (no judgment here, I don’t even know what I did in class last night, hmmm… maybe I didn’t actually go to class last night), candy assumes one of two forms – either it is crystalline or noncrystalline (glassy). Cotton candy is made up of thin stands of glassy sugar.
To form a glass confection, the melted sugar solution must be cooled quickly. Rapid cooling of cotton candy’s thin spindly strands is achieved by shooting the sugar liquid out of tiny little holes, providing a liquid stream with extremely high surface area and maximal cooling potential. The thin strands of sugar glass are somewhat unstable due to this extremely high surface area. Remember that water can always recruit sugar molecules away from their nicely organized structures, making a product like cotton candy highly susceptible to humidity damage.
Besides moisture damage, a common problem in noncrystalline confections is the undesirable formation of sugar crystals, a defect known as graining (see below).
Using corn syrup as an ingredient is an excellent method for preventing graining. Corn syrup is made up saccharide molecules that interfere with the sucrose crystallization process. This property is helpful for improving the quality of treats like cotton candy and hard candy. Another fabulous advantage of these sassy little saccharide molecules in corn syrup is that they are reducing sugars. Reducing sugars are precursors essential to the Maillard browning reaction, the reaction responsible for some of candy’s best flavors.
Maillard browning is the cause of your mom’s home-baked cookies’ crispy brown crust, the charred stripes on your cooked meats and some of the distinct brown flavors in caramels, hard candies and butterscotch. So basically corn syrup is great for candy, and in fact, some corn syrups are literally sweeter than sugar, making your candies that much more delectable!
Cotton Candy by Terwilliger911.
5:36 pm on September 29th, 2009
Thanks for explaining cotton candy, a very mysterious substance indeed!
In my research in the candy archives, I came across a very funny story about confusion between “glucose” (another name for corn syrup) and glue back in the olden days. When candy makers described glucose as an ingredient, candy alarmists shouted, “see! candy is made out of glue!” So in 1914, the candy industry and the corn industry joined forces to lobby congress to allow glucose to be called “corn syrup.” Problem solved.
Sources and details:
http://candyprofessor.com/2009/09/28/glue-cose/
I’ll add a link back to your scientific explanation of corn syrup also. Thanks again for doing these posts!
5:38 pm on September 29th, 2009
[...] More on the science of Corn Syrup in candy making at Laura’s Candy Science Tuesday on Candy Dish Blog [...]
6:20 pm on September 29th, 2009
Hey Candy Scientist, How do those sassy sacharides differ in sugar and corn syrup? Or are they the same???
10:50 pm on September 29th, 2009
OK, Perfessor, and while you’re at it, can you explain the difference between corn syrup and white corn syrup that I can buy at the grocery store? And is it the same corn syrup used in candy making as the stuff I can buy at the grocery store?
ps. Speaking of the grocery store, sometimes they’ll sell packaged cotton candy. When my kids were younger, I’d buy it for them as a treat!
11:19 pm on September 29th, 2009
ali – Table Sugar is Sucrose. It’s a disaccharide, which is one loosely bonded fructose molecule and one glucose molecule.
Corn Syrup, in its ordinary state is mostly glucose. (As if it actually exists in a natural state.) And it tastes different than sucrose, some think it’s not quite as sweet.
Fructose, on the other hand, has a much greater relative sweetness – something like 1.75 times as sweet. (But put them together and voila, the base level of sweetness we associate with sugar.)
High Fructose Corn Syrup is Corn Syrup that’s been additionally treated to convert some of the glucose to fructose. So while it has more fructose in it than regular corn syrup, it’s usually about 55% fructose (not 100% as some people think).
So HFCS has the same relative sweetness but it doesn’t behave quite the same, as the saccharides are not bonded. And some folks think they can tell the difference. (I pretty much lost interest in sodas around the time that HFCS came into wide use. Coincidence?)
Timmy – yes, the stuff you get at the grocery store is pretty much the same. Look at the label though, you really want the plain corn syrup, not the HFCS, as it does behave a little differently. Also, Karo has the addition of vanilla flavor in it, so depending on what you make, you might want to look for something unflavored.
Hard candy is really easy to make, it just takes a little patience.
1:36 pm on September 30th, 2009
Thank you for your informative response cybele! Indeed corn syrup is made up of the same molecular components as sucrose and honey. Of the two monosaccharides that make up sucrose, fructose is slightly sweeter than sugar (about 1.8x as sweet) and glucose is slightly less sweet (about 0.8x as sweet). Therefore, the sweetness of the corn syrup actually depends on the concentration of these molecules.
What I failed to mention in my entry is that not all corn syrups are created equally. Well perhaps they are equal in applicability but certainly different in chemical nature. Many corn syrups, like those for purchase in the grocery store are predominantly composed of glucose units. High fructose corn syrup, however has a glucose/fructose ratio of 1:1, the same as sugar and honey. Trained tasting experts sit on panels to evaluate sweetness, as no analytical instrument can match the human tongue. These panels have determined that most HFCS is about as sweet as sugar.
Some corn syrup is specifically designed to be very viscous and this thickness can be quite useful in certain applications, while other corn syrup is meant to provide sweetness or reducing sugars to the formulation. A descriptive characteristic that determines the behavior of corn syrup is the dextrose equivalent (DE). This number reflects the reducing sugar concentration. The higher this number, the more the larger starchy carbohydrates have been cleaved into small little glucose and fructose units. A high DE is also associated with lower viscosity and also generally greater sweetness. A HFCS with a DE of around 55 has a sweetness almost identical to sugar, while lower DEs are less sweet and higher DEs are sweeter.
10:11 am on October 1st, 2009
Laura, we are lucky to have someone as brainy and cool as you here at our candy-coated hideaway. Thanks for that follow-up!
10:41 am on October 1st, 2009
Wow. All this candy science makes me feel smarter. And hungry.
1:48 pm on October 6th, 2009
[...] enough reminiscing back to Laura’s weird childhood and lifelong love affair with milk, what does this have to do with candy, you are most certainly [...]
4:52 pm on October 13th, 2009
[...] Some caramel functions best in caramel corn as a hardened shell around a popcorn center, just like I had as a kid at the circus. However, the caramel in your mocha caramel frappuccino is most functional when it mixes well with [...]