Preface to the First Edition

While most people have eaten sugar confectionery at some time few people know the underlying science. Almost all sugar confectionery was developed not from an understanding of the science but by confectioners working by trial and error. In many cases this empirical knowledge was obtained before any scientific understanding was available.

There is one exception to this rule and that is where products have been made to resemble sugar confectionery but are free of sugars. This small area has absorbed more scientific effort than the rest of sugar confectionery put together.

This book is intended for everyone who has eaten sugar confectionery and wondered what the science behind it is. The work is not intended as a manual of methods for making confectionery but does give illustrative examples of manufacturing methods.

Some simple recipes have been included to allow readers to do some small scale confectionery making. Experiments can be based on these recipes to study a number of areas relating to confectionery making.

This book has to be dedicated to the largely anonymous confectioners who invented most sugar confectionery products. It is also dedicated to my old friend Brian Jackson.