Most candy is made from sugar, and chocolate is made from the fruit of the cacao tree. The fruit is called a pod, and the cacao beans grow inside it. Inside an intact cacao pod there are no microbes; the beans in it are wrapped in a juicy white pulp. The germs that ferment cocoa come from the surroundings. They arrive from the outside of the pod, from workers' hands, from insects or from the air, once the pod is opened. Fermentation has two phases. The first has no oxygen, which makes it anaerobic, and in this phase yeasts turn the sugar in the pulp into alcohol; the second phase has air, which makes it aerobic, and in this phase bacteria turn the alcohol into acids. Breaking down the alcohol gives off heat, and this heat warms the cocoa beans and, together with the acid, kills the bean's embryo. The beans reach about 45 to 50 degrees Celsius along the way. The whole process lasts about six days, and the beans turn brown when it ends.
Inside the bean, enzymes work during fermentation to break down proteins and carbohydrates, and the result is flavor chemicals, which is why unfermented beans lack real chocolate taste. Some chocolate makers say that without fermentation cacao would have no flavor at all. The flavors turn into aromas during roasting, which also loosens the shells so they can be removed. What is left is the nib, the meat of the bean.
Nibs are ground into a thick paste called cocoa liquor, which has no alcohol in it. Cocoa butter, the fat in cocoa beans, is pressed out of the liquor, and for chocolate candy some of it is mixed back in with the cocoa solids. As of November 2026, federal rules in the United States set what can be called milk chocolate. It must have at least 10 percent chocolate liquor and at least 12 percent total milk solids.
Controlling sugar crystals is the main skill in candy making; cooks stir at certain moments and keep syrup at certain temperatures to make candy grow crystals, as fudge does, or stay glass-like, as hard candy does. A cook also chooses how hot to boil the syrup. A cooler syrup makes soft candies like fudge, while the hottest syrup, at the hard crack stage, makes crunchy candies like brittle and lollipops. Fudge is a crystalline candy, because the cook cools and stirs the soft ball syrup at the right time so that many tiny crystals form. Corn syrup and honey are added to some candies because they interfere with sugar crystals; this keeps hard candy and caramel smooth instead of grainy. Hard candy itself is a glass, since its sugar is not arranged in crystals, and that is why it is hard and clear and why it snaps instead of crumbling.
Gummy candy gets its chew from gelatin, a protein that comes from animals, and gelatin turns a sugary liquid into a soft gel. A sweetener called sorbitol is in some gummies, and it helps them keep their moisture so that they stay soft longer. Gummy candy is shaped in trays of starch, and the candy mix is poured into dents pressed in the starch. The leftover starch is not wasted: it is cleaned, dried with hot moving air and sent back to the machine, which is called a mogul.
A jelly bean has a soft middle and a hard shell made of sugar; jelly beans are made from sugar, corn syrup and food starch, and the middle and the shell usually match in flavor and color. Candy gets its bright colors from dyes that are added to it, because sugar is naturally white. The middles are shaped in trays of cornstarch, because cornstarch keeps the shape pressed into it, and a machine called a depositor squirts hot candy syrup into each tiny dent. A jelly bean is finished in a spinning pan, where sugar builds up on the soft middle and makes the hard shell, and then a glaze makes it shiny. Making one jelly bean takes 6 to 10 days from start to finish.
Most candy is made from sugar, and sugar comes from sugarcane or from sugar beets. Germs in the mouth use sugar to make acid, and the acid can eat tiny holes in the tooth's outer layer, so brushing teeth twice a day with fluoride toothpaste helps protect them from the damage that sugar can cause.
A 2020 study funded by the US Department of Labor and carried out by NORC at the University of Chicago was the largest look yet at child labor in cocoa farming in Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana. It estimated that about 1.56 million children were in cocoa-related child labor in 2018-19. Most of that work was dangerous: about 95 percent of those children, roughly 1.48 million, were doing hazardous work. In 2018-19, about half of children in cocoa-growing households were in cocoa-related child labor, and over a third of children in Côte d'Ivoire and just over half in Ghana worked in cocoa cultivation.
Olmec people in what is now southern Mexico began growing cacao around 1500 B.C.E., and they likely used it for a ceremonial drink. Chocolate was a drink for most of its history. Hard chocolate bars did not appear until 1847.
The first candy in history was probably made with honey. A cave painting in Spain, about 8,000 years old, shows a person collecting honey from a beehive. In Europe, long ago, sweets and chocolate were mostly for rich people, because sugar was expensive and sweets were a luxury. Candy making grew into big business in the 1800s. Before then, nearly all candy was made by hand, and the Industrial Revolution brought machines that could make a lot of candy.
Words to know
- anaerobic: without air
- aerobic: with air
- crystalline: made of crystals
- liquor: ground cocoa paste
- sorbitol: soft-keeping sweetener
