• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

CooksInfo

  • Home
  • Encyclopaedia
  • Kitchenware
  • Recipes
  • Food Calendar
menu icon
go to homepage
search icon
Homepage link
  • Recipes
  • Encyclopaedia
  • Kitchenware
  • Food Calendar
×
Home » Technical Terms » Stages of Cooked Sugar Syrups for Candy – Temperature Guide

Stages of Cooked Sugar Syrups for Candy – Temperature Guide

Much of candy-making starts with making a syrup from sugar and water, and then cooking it to certain temperatures depending on the candy being made. All of the temperatures required are over 100 C, which at first seems impossible because the boiling temperature of water is 100 C and it can’t get any hotter. What you are doing, though, is driving water out of the syrup through evaporation, leaving behind molten sugar as an ever increasing percentage of the mixture as the water percentage diminishes. This makes the hotter than boiling water temperatures possible, and is also a gauge of both how cooked and how thick the syrup is, as well as what the nature of the molten sugar will be when cooled.

The stages of cooking sugar syrup are:

1. Thread Stage (106 – 112 C)
2. Soft-Ball Stage (112 – 116 C)
3. Firm-Ball Stage (118 – 121 C)
4. Hard-Ball Stage (121 – 130 C)
5. Soft-Crack Stage (132 – 143 C)
6. Hard-Crack Stage (149 – 154 C)

It takes a long time even boiling at a high temperature to hit 105, and then again to hit 110 C. After that, though, it all happens very, very fast, so you must be very attentive or you will whiz past hard-crack stage even and be approaching carmelization.

It is best to use a candy-thermometer to be sure of exactly where you’re at. However, many people don’t make candy often enough to want to buy or store a candy thermometer, so tests have evolved which involve dropping a small spoonful of hot sugar syrup into a (clear) glass of relatively cold water and guessing at the temperature by how the hot sugar syrup reacts in the water.

Cooking Tips

High altitude: For every 300 metres (1,000 feet) that you are above sea level, subtract 1 degree C (2 degrees F) from the temperatures given in your candy recipe.

This page first published: Oct 19, 2013 · Updated: Jun 5, 2018.

This web site generates income from affiliated links and ads at no cost to you to fund continued research · Information on this site is Copyright © 2025· Feel free to cite correctly, but copying whole pages for your website is content theft and will be DCMA'd.

Tagged With: Candy Terms, Syrups

Primary Sidebar

Hi, I'm Skylar! This is a fake profile talking about how I switched to a paleo diet and it helped my eczema and I grew 4". Trust me, I'm an online doctor.

More about me →

Popular

  • E.D. Smith Pumpkin Purée
    E.D. Smith recipe for pumpkin pie
  • Libby's Pumpkin Pie
    Libby’s recipe for pumpkin pie
  • Pie crust
    Pie Crust Recipe
  • Smokey Maple Pepper Glaze for Ham
    Smokey Maple Pepper Glaze for Ham

You can duplicate your homepage's trending recipes section in the sidebar to reinforce the internal linking.

We no longer recommend using a search bar, newsletter form or category drop-down menu in the sidebar. See the Modern Sidebar post for details.

If the block editor is not narrower than usual, simply save the page and refresh it.

Search

    Today is

  • Dunmow Flitch Trials
    The flitch of bacon.
  • Independence Day Argentina
    Crowd of people waving Argentine flags
  • Sugar Cookie Day
    Sugar cookie

Footer

↑ back to top

About

  • About this site
  • Privacy Policy
  • Copyright enforced!
  • Terms & Conditions

Newsletter

  • Sign Up! for emails and updates

Site

  • Recipes
  • Encyclopaedia
  • Kitchenware
  • Food Calendar

This web site generates income from affiliated links and ads at no cost to you to fund continued research · The text on this site is © Copyright.