Original photo by GWImages/ Shutterstock
The next time you pop some jelly beans into your mouth, you may want to take a moment to appreciate just how much effort goes into producing these bite-sized delights. As explained by industry giant Jelly Belly, the process begins by heating a sugar, cornstarch, corn syrup, and water mixture, known as a slurry, and adding fruit purée, juice concentrate, or other ingredients for flavoring. From there, the mixture is squirted into cornstarch-coated molding trays, and left to solidify into the chewy jelly bean centers.
Oops, incorrect!
It's a factReagan, who turned to the sweets to help stop smoking, developed an insatiable taste for jelly beans during his tenure as California's governor. In 1981, he received 3.5 tons of red, white, and blue jelly beans for his presidential inauguration.
The following day, the bean centers are sent through a steam bath and a sugar shower to keep them from sticking. They are then loaded into a spinning machine for a process known as "panning," in which sugar and syrup are manually applied over the course of two hours to slowly build each bean's candied shell. Following another settling period, the candies receive an additional syrup coating, before being polished with confectioner's glaze and beeswax. Upon earning a final thumbs-up by way of visual inspection and spot taste-testing, the beans are stamped with the Jelly Belly logo and shipped out into the world.
It's a lot of shower, rinse, rest, and repeat for a process that takes seven to 14 days to complete. And while that might seem like an outsized increment of time for such a tiny edible, the Americans who gobble down an average of 16 billion jelly beans every Easter seem to think it's worth it.
Numbers Don't Lie
More Interesting Reads
National Jelly Bean Day is annually celebrated on ______.
Ready to reveal?
Confirm your email to play the next question?
National Jelly Bean Day is annually celebrated on April 22.
Jelly beans first appeared in the United States during the 19th century.
Nobody knows for sure where jelly beans came from, but they’re said to have descended from a pair of European predecessors: jellied Turkish delights, which became the pride of Istanbul in the late 18th century, and Jordan almonds, which began receiving their candy shells in the 15th century. Allegedly mentioned early on in a Civil War-era advertisement from Boston candymaker William Schrafft, jelly beans were considered a Yuletide specialty by the end of the 19th century, before becoming more closely associated with Easter within a few decades. But perhaps the biggest step in jelly bean history came in 1965, when the Herman Goelitz Candy Company found a way to flavor both the chewy center and the crunchy shell of their Mini Jelly Beans, creating the modern marvel enjoyed by candy connoisseurs everywhere.
Tim Ott has written for sites including Biography.com, History.com, and MLB.com, and is known to delude himself into thinking he can craft a marketable screenplay.
