Why we still pull candy by hand

If you have ever watched someone make hard candy, you have seen the same gesture: a mass of hot sugar taken off the slab, stretched between two hands, folded back on itself, stretched again. It looks like taffy-making and it is, structurally, the same motion. What it does to the sugar is the part worth understanding.

What pulling actually does

Three things happen every time you stretch and fold hot sugar.

• Air gets folded in. Hundreds of fine layers of air are trapped between the folds of sugar. This is what turns a transparent syrup into something satin, and it is why hand-pulled candy has a soft, almost waxy gleam rather than the hard mirror shine of poured candy.
• The colour changes. Any colour in the syrup is stretched into thinner and thinner sheets, which lightens it. A deep red poured onto the slab becomes a soft rose after twenty folds. Candy makers use this deliberately: we start darker than the colour we want, knowing the pull will lift it.
• The crystal structure settles. Pulling works the sugar while it is cooling, which discourages the large crystals that make candy feel gritty. The result is a cleaner bite that does not shatter into dust in your hand.

Why not just use a machine

A batch roller will do this faster, more evenly and with far less risk of a burn. We are not against machines; our kettle is not exactly a historical artifact. But three things stop us from automating the pull.

The first is that machines pull by time and tension, and we pull by feel. Sugar on a humid day behaves differently from sugar in February, and the only reliable instrument for that is a pair of hands that have done it a few thousand times. The second is that our batches are forty pieces. Setting up a machine for forty pieces takes longer than the pulling does. The third is simple preference: the irregularity is the product. A Copper Comet whose spiral repeats perfectly would be a different, and less interesting, candy.

You can taste whether a batch was watched. That sounds like a romantic claim, but it is really just a description of what happens when sugar spends forty minutes under someone's attention.

How to spot a pulled lollipop in four seconds

You do not need to be a candy maker. Look for these four things.

1. Look through the edge, not the face. A pulled lollipop has layers visible at the rim, like the pages of a closed book. A poured one is uniformly clear to the edge.
2. Check for a seam or a swirl that runs off the edge. Poured swirls are usually applied to the surface. Pulled patterns go all the way through and often look slightly smeared where the rope was cut.
3. Look at the air. Very fine, evenly distributed bubbles suggest a careful pull. A few enormous bubbles suggest someone was in a hurry and folding cold sugar.
4. Look at the shine. Mirror-bright means poured or polished. Soft, slightly hazy satin means pulled. Neither is automatically better, but you should know what you are paying for.

Where it goes wrong

Pulling has a narrow window. Too hot and the sugar slumps and will not hold a fold; too cool and it cracks along the fold lines and the batch is finished. That window is perhaps ninety seconds wide in a warm kitchen and about three minutes wide in a cold one, which is why we cook in the mornings in summer and do not cook at all on the most humid days.

If you are trying this at home, use a silicone mat on a cool surface, keep a pair of clean cotton gloves nearby, and start with a small quantity you are willing to throw away. The first three attempts are a lesson, not a batch.

Candy that has been pulled well also keeps its clarity longer, because there are fewer large crystals for moisture to gather around. That is a useful thing to know when you get it home — and the next article, on storing handmade candy, covers what to do from there.