Most candy is made from sugar. Sugar comes from sugarcane or from sugar beets. Sugar is naturally white, so candy gets its bright colors from dyes that are added to it. Let us follow a few favorites from the start, one at a time.

The first candy in history was probably made with honey. People in ancient Egypt used honey to sweeten foods. One account says they mixed honey with sesame seeds. That may have been the first candy. Today most candy starts with sugar instead of honey.

Hard candy starts as sugar syrup. A cook heats the syrup until almost all the water is gone. Syrup that is nearly all sugar is what makes hard candy snap. Cooks call that point the hard crack stage. When it cools, a lollipop turns hard.

Chocolate begins on a cacao tree. Its fruit is a pod, and the beans grow inside it. Workers pick only ripe pods by hand, using knives. A fresh bean tastes very bitter and harsh. It has to be fermented, dried and roasted first.

Roasting gives the beans the rich flavor we know as chocolate. It also makes the shells of the beans loosen. The shells are removed. What is left is the nib, the meat of the bean. Chocolate is made from the nib, once the beans are dried and roasted.

When the chocolate is ready, it is poured into molds, cooled, cut and wrapped. The cooling takes time, at least 20 minutes to an hour.

For most of its history, chocolate was a drink. Hard chocolate bars did not appear until 1847.

A jelly bean has a soft middle and a hard shell made of sugar. A machine called a depositor squirts hot candy syrup into tiny dents in trays of starch, which keeps the shape pressed into it. The middles tumble in a spinning pan. Sugar builds up into the shell, and a glaze makes it shiny. One bean takes 6 to 10 days.

Gummy candy gets its chew from gelatin, a protein that comes from animals. Gelatin turns a sugary liquid into a soft gel. The candy mix is poured into dents pressed in trays of starch. The starch keeps it from sticking to the tray while it sets.

Cotton candy is sugar spun into thin strands. It was invented by a dentist. In 1897, William Morrison, a dentist, worked with a candy maker named John C. Wharton on the first machine. They called it fairy floss. Sugar can hurt teeth, so brush twice a day with fluoride toothpaste.

Words to know

• cacao: chocolate tree
• nib: bean meat
• depositor: squirting machine
• gelatin: a gel maker
• glaze: shiny coating

The short version

Most candy is made from sugar. Hard candy is made by cooking sugar syrup until it is very hot, and it turns hard when it cools. Chocolate comes from cacao beans that are fermented, dried and roasted. Gummy candy gets its chew from gelatin, and jelly beans are built up in a spinning pan.

Quick facts

• Most candy is made from sugar, which comes from sugarcane or sugar beets.
• Chocolate comes from the nib of the cacao bean, after it is fermented, dried and roasted.
• Hard candy snaps because the syrup is cooked until it is nearly all sugar.
• Gummy candy gets its chew from gelatin and is shaped in trays of starch.
• One jelly bean takes 6 to 10 days to make.