Jelly beans are small

bean A bean is the seed of several plants in the family Fabaceae, which are used as vegetables for human or animal food. They can be cooked in many different ways, including boiling, frying, and baking, and are used in many traditional dishes thr ...

shaped sugar candies with soft candy shells and thick gel interiors (see

gelatin Gelatin or gelatine (from la, gelatus meaning "stiff" or "frozen") is a translucent, colorless, flavorless food ingredient, commonly derived from collagen taken from animal body parts. It is brittle when dry and rubbery when moist. It may also ...

and jelly). The confection is primarily made of sugar and sold in a wide variety of colors and flavors.

History

It has been claimed that jelly beans were first mentioned during 1861, when

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- most p ...

confectioner William Schrafft urged people to send his jelly beans to soldiers during the American Civil War. It was not until July 5, 1905, that jelly beans were mentioned in the ''

Chicago Daily News The ''Chicago Daily News'' was an afternoon daily newspaper in the midwestern United States, published between 1875 and 1978 in Chicago, Illinois. History The ''Daily News'' was founded by Melville E. Stone, Percy Meggy, and William Doughert ...

''. The advertisement publicized bulk beans sold by volume for ten cents per pound, according to the book ''The Century in Food: America's Fads and Favorites''. Most historians contend that jelly beans were first associated with celebrations of Easter in the United States sometime during the 1930s due to their egg-like shape.

Manufacture

The basic ingredients of jelly beans include sugar,

tapioca Tapioca (; ) is a starch extracted from the storage roots of the cassava plant (''Manihot esculenta,'' also known as manioc), a species native to the North and Northeast regions of Brazil, but whose use is now spread throughout South America ...

corn syrup Corn syrup is a food syrup which is made from the starch of corn (called maize in many countries) and contains varying amounts of sugars: glucose, maltose and higher oligosaccharides, depending on the grade. Corn syrup is used in foods to soften ...

, and pectin or starch. Relatively minor amounts of the emulsifying agent

lecithin Lecithin (, from the Greek ''lekithos'' "yolk") is a generic term to designate any group of yellow-brownish fatty substances occurring in animal and plant tissues which are amphiphilic – they attract both water and fatty substances (and so ar ...

, anti-foaming agents, an edible wax such as

carnauba wax Carnauba (; pt, carnaúba ), also called Brazil wax and palm wax, is a wax of the leaves of the carnauba palm '' Copernicia prunifera'' (synonym: ''Copernicia cerifera''), a plant native to and grown only in the northeastern Brazilian states of ...

beeswax Beeswax (''cera alba'') is a natural wax produced by honey bees of the genus ''Apis''. The wax is formed into scales by eight wax-producing glands in the abdominal segments of worker bees, which discard it in or at the hive. The hive worker ...

, salt, and

confectioner's glaze Resinous glaze is an alcohol-based solution of various types of food-grade shellac. The shellac is derived from the raw material sticklac, which is a resin scraped from the branches of trees left from when the small insect, ''Kerria lacca'' (also k ...

are also included. The ingredients that give each bean its character are also relatively small in proportion and may vary depending on the flavor.

Slang

In United States slang during the 1910s and early 1920s, a "jellybean" or "jelly-bean" was a young man who dressed stylishly but had little else to recommend him, similar to the older terms '' dandy'' and '' fop''. F. Scott Fitzgerald published a story about such a character, ''The Jelly-Bean,'' during 1920.

In popular culture

When

Beatlemania Beatlemania was the fanaticism surrounding the English rock band the Beatles in the 1960s. The group's popularity grew in the United Kingdom throughout 1963, propelled by the singles "Please Please Me", "From Me to You" and "She Loves You". By ...

broke out in 1964, fans of the Beatles in the US pelted the band with jelly beans (emulating fans in the UK who threw the British candy Jelly Babies at

George Harrison George Harrison (25 February 1943 – 29 November 2001) was an English musician and singer-songwriter who achieved international fame as the lead guitarist of the Beatles. Sometimes called "the quiet Beatle", Harrison embraced Indian ...

, who reportedly liked eating them). President Ronald Reagan's favorite treat was jelly beans.

References

External links