Jawbreakers. The legacy of the candy industry to the dental profession. There is probably no other candy anywhere that has the exceptional toughness of a jawbreaker or possibly that high of sugar content.

Enough talk. Now, discover the sheer joy (and feeling of frustration) that comes with the jawbreaker experience.

The ancient Egyptians used honey, sweet fruits, spices, and nuts to prepare their sweets. Sugar was not available in Egypt; the first written record of its accessibility was found around 500 AD, in India. India passed the practice of making sugar from the boiled syrup of the sugar cane plant to the Arabs who introduced, around AD 1100, sugar to Europe. Originally, sugar was considered a spice and, until the 15th century, it was used only for medicinal purposes, distributed in miniscule doses, due to its extreme rarity. By the 16th century, due to extensive sugar cultivation and improved refining methods, sugar was no longer considered a rare commodity. At this point, raw sweets were being made in Europe, but by the late 18th century, candy-making machinery was producing more complex sweets in much larger quantities.

When sugar is cooked at a high temperature, it fully crystallizes and turns into a hard candy. The jawbreaker, definitely a hard candy, closely resembled several popular sweets in mid-19th century America. Hard candies were normally sold by the piece; the shopkeeper took the desired quantity of pieces out of a glass case or jar. In the mid-18th century, there were nearly 400 candy factories producing penny candy in the United States.

The jawbreaker rose to fame thanks to the efforts of the Ferrari Pan Candy Company in Forest Park, Illinois. Founded in 1919, the Ferrari Pan Candy Company, the brainchild of Salvador Ferrari and his two brothers-in-law, specialized in sweets made with the hot pan and cold pan process. Ferrari Pan now specializes in the production of its original Jaw Breakers, as well as Boston Baked Beans and Red Hots. Although there are many jawbreaker manufacturers now in the 21st century, such as Nestlé’s Willy Wonka Candy Company and Scones Candy Company, Ferrari Pan is still the most prolific bread candy maker in the world.

Jawbreakers, also known as gob stoppers (from British slang: gob for the mouth and plug to block an opening), belong to a category of hard candy where each candy, usually round, varies in size from a small 1/4 ” ball to a whopping 3-3 / 8 “. The surface, as well as the inside, of a jawbreaker is incredibly hard and is not designed for people with a sensitive mouth. The jaw breakers are, for the most part, hollow except for the super large 3-3 / 8 “ball which has a center filled with gum.

Let’s get to the nitty-gritty of the hot pan candy making process. A jawbreaker is made up of sugar, sugar, and more sugar. It takes 14 to 19 days to produce a single jawbreaker, from a single grain of sugar to the finished product. A batch of jawbreakers constantly falls into huge spherical copper kettles over a gas flame. All kettles or pans have a wide mouth or opening.

There are five basic steps used to create jawbreakers.

  • Pouring the sugar A panner (the worker who uses the pots or kettles to make candy) pours granulated sugar into a pot while a gas flame preheats the pot. Each grain of sugar will become a jawbreaker as the crystallization process progresses; other grains crystallize around it in a spherical pattern. The skillet pours hot liquid sugar into the pan along its edges. Jawbreakers begin to increase in size as the liquid sugar clings to the sugar grains. In a seemingly never-ending effort, the pot continues to add additional liquid sugar to the pots at intervals over a period of time of 14 to 19 days, with the pot spinning non-stop. It is possible to add liquid sugar to the pan more than 100 times in those 14 to 19 days. The panner or some other worker visually examines the jaw breakers at intervals to make sure there are no abnormalities in the shape of the candy.
  • Add other ingredients Only the outer layers of most types of jawbreakers have coloration. Only when the jawbreakers have almost reached their final size does the pan add the default color and aromas to the rim of the pan. As the kettle continues to spin, all the jawbreakers “dress” uniformly in color and flavor.
  • Polished When the jaw breakers have reached their optimum size, after about two weeks, they are transferred from the hot skillet to a polishing pan. Hot pans and polishing pans look a lot alike. At this point, the jaw breakers are set to rotate on their polishing tray. Another skillet adds food grade wax to the pan so that each candy is polished as the pan turns. Once polished, the jaw breakers are finished and ready to be packaged.
  • Measurement The finished jaw breakers are loaded onto an inclined chute where the sweet colors can be mixed evenly. Small batches of jawbreakers go down the ramp and fall into a central ramp. The jawbreakers continue their journey by falling into trays arranged in spiral arms of the central ramp. Each tray has only a predetermined weight of jaw breakers (ie 80 oz or 5 pounds). When that weight is reached, the tray swings so that the next tray is loaded. When the upper trays reach their loading weight, the lower trays drop their jaw breakers into the bagging machine.
  • Sacking A large machine holding a wide, thin plastic spool on a rotating drum is used to automatically bag the jaw breakers. The machine forms plastic bags, fills them with jaw breakers, and then seals the bags. The filled bags are now in the final stage of production. All that’s left to do is put these complete bags into packing boxes and hit the market.

Warning: jaw breakers are meant to be sucked, not bitten, unless you like the look of broken teeth.

Jawbreaker trivia

  • A jawbreaker can be as big as a golf ball or as small as a pinch of candy.
  • When a jawbreaker is opened, you will see dozens and dozens of layers of sugar that look a lot like the concentric rings of an old tree seen in cross section.
  • A jawbreaker is not intended for the anxious person who is always in a hurry. It can take hours to properly consume a jawbreaker. Remember: suck, lick, whatever, but don’t try to break through the layers. Jawbreakers are made of crystallized sugar, which can sometimes be considered the same heartbreaking hardness as concrete. Be careful, please.
  • At least two occasions have been reported where a jawbreaker spontaneously exploded, leaving its user with severe burns that required hospitalization. An explosion involved a 9-year-old girl from Florida. She had left her jawbreaker sitting in direct sunlight and when she took her first lick, the jawbreaker exploded on her face, leaving her severely burned to various areas of her body. The other explosion took place on the site of the Discovery Channel television show MythBusters when a microwave oven was used to illustrate that it can cause different compressed layers within a jawbreaker to heat up at different speeds and thus explode the it breaks jaws, causing a massive spray of extremely hot products. caramel to sprinkle over a wide area. MythBusters host Adam Savage and another crew member were treated for minor burns.

Happy licking!