` Rock candy has been around for a very long time. Some of the earliest literature references to it have been found in the middle 1200’s. For centuries it was thought to have therapeutic and preservative qualities. It has been used all over the world, from Turkey to India to China to the US. Throughout history, many uses have been described for it. Such as a cough-cold remedy, a mouth freshener, a sweetener for soups and soda fountain syrups. It was also used as money in Thailand and it was made into candy skulls in Mexico.
Rock candy is the product of recrystallizing cane sugar. It is the purest form of sugar since all impurities are excluded as the large crystals form. The process used to make rock candy is the same process used to form quartz and diamonds. The molecular crystal of sucrose is broken and is reform under conditions that produce larger purer crystals than the original sucrose. Basically, a crystal is a solid in which the atoms, molecules or ions are packed in a regularly ordered, repeating pattern that extends in all directions. And when you disturb the balance that exists in a sugar and water solution it causes sugar crystals to grow. The solution must be saturated with sugar so the water has to dissolve all of the sugar possible at a particular temperature. The warmer the water the more sugar the water can dissolve. So, the water must be heated before dissolving the sugar into it. When the saturated sugar solution is cooled, it becomes supersaturated with sugar. A supersaturated solution is unstable because it has more solute (in this case sugar) than can stay in a liquid form so the sugar
