What even is nougat, and why is it in so many things? It's a primary component in nearly
every candy bar, up with there with caramel, chocolate, nuts — but I know what those
things are. WTF is nougat?
"Basically it's an aerated confection, where the air is stabilized by some kind of protein,
and the continuous phase is basically a sugar syrup."
That's Dr. Richard Hartel, professor of food engineering at the University of Wisconsin,
Madison, and "continuous phase" in this context basically just means the main structure of
the thing.
In chocolate, the continuous phase is fat — cocoa butter — a web of fat molecules
with little bits of cocoa solids and sugars hanging inside that web. Those are the dispersed
phases.
In nougat...
"...the dispersed phase is air, and the continuous phase which holds that air is a sugar matrix."
And within that, there's a web of proteins surrounding the air bubbles. The protein is
what makes this whipped sugar syrup stable, solid and stretchy or bouncy.
So that makes sense. But here's the thing: "An aerated sugar syrup stabilized with protein"
describes a lot of different confections – not just nougat, but meringue, marshmallow, a
popular one here in the American South called "divinity" — what makes nougat different?
Well, Dr. Hartel says it comes down to four big variables: the air content, the water
content, the kind of sugar being used, and the kind of protein being used. We'll work
ourselves back through that list.
Nougat is usually made with egg and sometimes soy protein. Marshmallow often has some of
those as well, but it usually also has gelatin, which is a protein boiled out of animal parts.
"And gelatin has a texture, when it's surrounding air bubbles like that, that's a really squishy,
elastic texture. So you push down on a jet-puffed marshmallow, it bounces back. If you push
down on a nougat, generally it stays where you left it, because you've broken that structure."
OK, but why, right? Why is gelatin bouncy?
"It's the nature of the junction zones as they form a gel. It's just a series of amino
acids like any protein is, but its secondary and tertiary structure are such that when
it forms a gel, it forms these really complicated heliecies at the junction zones and those
— like springs — have some elasticity to it.
In contrast, albumin and globulin form much simpler networks that just don't do that.
And albumin and globulin are the proteins in eggs and soy respectively.
And usually egg is being used in nougat. But albumin is also the protein used in this stuff:
marshmallow fluff. There's no gelatin in this — just eggs. Why is this marshmallow and
not nougat? Well, I think we need to see some nougat being made.
Let's put on our Mister Rogers cardigans and our hairnets and get a little factory tour.
This is Crown Candy, a mid-size confectionary where I live in Macon, Georgia, that has been
operating for literally a hundred years. They make old-timey, nostalgia-type candies under
various brand names.
Yes, that's nougat for their log rolls. It's so sticky that they can't handle it with gloves.
They're constantly dipping their hands in sanitized water as they work it. The Vice
President of production here at Crown Candy is my buddy Jamie Weatherford.
"The liquids will go up top in the kettle, the solids will be in the bottom kettle, they
get pre-mixed, and then you cook your liquid to a particular temperature, remove any moisture
to the amount that you want, and then drop it into your solids, mix it up."
The is stuff in the lower bowl is basically what you would mix together here in the kitchen
to get a meringue going — whipped egg whites with some sugar to help stabilize the bubbles.
In the factory they're combining water with some dried egg albumin, a combination of different
sugars like fructose and corn syrup, and this stuff — frappé, or fra-PAY. It's a pre-whipped
sugar and egg mixture that they use to kinda get the aeration process started. All that
gets fluffed up, and then the hot syrup comes down and gets whipped in gradually. This slowly
cooks the nougat.
"We bring it over here onto these tables, we give it an opportunity to cool down. And
then we place them in an extruder, and then we have a guillotine that comes in and breaks
the log — it comes out in a one string, and then it breaks it."
Brutal! You might say, let them eat nougat — in this case, nougat coated in caramel
and nuts. Then the logs go into a climate-controlled room to cure, or dry out for a little bit.
And this gets to the second of the four big variables that make nougat nougat and not
something else, and that is water content. It's pretty intuitive — the more water a
confection has, the softer it's generally gonna be, hence Marshmallow Fluff, or in this
case, Italian meringue, which is just homemade Marshmallow Fluff. Again, there's no gelatin
in this. It's hot syrup drizzled into an egg foam, just like nougat, so why don't we call
it nougat?
Well, I think it's just because it has more water. In candy making, the way you control
the water content is by boiling your syrup up to a certain temperature.
Syrup physically can't reach certain temperatures until it's boiled off a certain amount of
its water. That's why it doesn't really matter how much water you put into your sugar when
you start, because you're gonna boil it out until you hit your target temperature, which
for Italian meringue is about 240 F, 115 C. That's low, as candy making goes, so there's
a lot of water still left in here, which is why the resulting product is soft and spreadable.
I think the softer, bouncier texture of this reminds people more of marshmallow than of
nougat, so that's why some people, including myself, call it marshmallow, even though it
has no gelatin.
When they make nougat at Crown Candy, they boil it up to 270 F, or 132 C. That's pretty
hot, as far as these things go, so the resulting product is much more firm.
Indeed, the texture of a confection is so sensitive to tiny variations in water content
that Jamie literally has to check the weather before he comes to work every day. Sugar is
hygroscopic, meaning it'll kinda suck water straight out of the air, and it gets super
swampy down here in Macon, Georgia.
"For instance, if I know it's gonna be a bright sunshiney summer day, I may cook our log centers
to 269 F. But if I know it's gonna be a very humid, kinda muggy summer week, I may increase
the temperature to 272 F."
He's gotta cook more water off to account for the water the candy is gonna suck in from
the air.
Water content also explains why say a meringue cookie is not nougat. It's baked in the oven
until virtually all the water is driven out of the outer crust, making it crunchy instead
of fluffy or chewy.
Water content is also the main difference between nougat and divinity, which is a classic
Southern grandma treat. The syrup for divinity is cooked to more like 250 F, 120 C, so there's
more water and it's a softer product.
That all explains why nougat is not other things. But why is nougat not like nougat?
This is nougat, this is nougat, and this is nougat. Totally different textures, all nougat.
We shall find out why that is the case, right after I thank the sponsor of this video, HelloFresh,
American's #1 Meal Kit. Lordie I need some vegetables after eating all that sugar, so
I'm going with the vegetarian meal plan this time. HelloFresh has meaty meal plans too,
of course, but even though I eat meat, I have found the veggie plan really helps me think
more creatively about plant-based meals. These were totally delicious and satisfying, and
I'm trying to eat less meat. HelloFresh spares you the stress of meal planning and going
out to the store. Everything arrives pre-portioned, and that pre-portioning minimizes food waste
which makes this surprisingly environmentally friendly. The packaging too is almost entirely
recycled or recyclable. And the plans are flexible. If you decide you want to get back
on the meat train, you can. If you decide you want to skip a week's delivery, you can,
whenever you want. It's easy.
Use my code ADAMRAGUSEA60 to get $60 off your first three weeks, including free shipping
on your first box with purchase. Go to HelloFresh.com to redeem and for more details. $60 off with
ADAMRAGUSEA60, that's all down in the description. Thank you, HelloFresh.
Now, how are both of these products considered nougat when they're so radically different
from each other? Well, Dr. Hartel says it comes down to the third of the four variables
we're discussing, which is the kind of sugar being used, and the state of the sugar. The
sugar in a 3 Musketeers, for example, is partially crystalline.
"So when you break a 3 Musketeers and pull it apart, the nougat breaks clean. Whereas,
if you tried to pull a chewy nougat — and a good example of a chewy nougat in the U.S.
is a Charleston Chew — and if you were to pull that apart, you'd get a longer stretch.
So, the sugar crystals actually break up the stretchiness of that sugar syrup — give
it a very different mouthfeel. So, with a Charleston Chew, you chew and you chew and
you chew, it sticks to your teeth, you keep chewing. It's good movie food."
And how do candy makers achieve this? By changing the ratio of the sugars, usually cane sugar
and corn syrup. Some fancy candies use honey instead of corn syrup because honey is way
more expensive, but on the molecular level, the concept is the same: sucrose vs some other
kind of sugar, glucose for example, though corn syrup can have lots of different kinds
of sugar in it. What matters is that it's not sucrose. Corn syrup is what they amusingly
call a "doctor" in the candy-making industry. A doctoring agent inhibits the formation of
sugar crystals.
It's a molecule that gets in-between the sucrose molecules and prevents them them from linking
up and forming a solid solid — a crystal. The more crystalized the nougat is, the more
brittle, or "short" the texture is. The fewer crystals you have, the chewier it is.
Candy makers of course try to keep their recipes as secret as possible, but here in the States,
the law says they have to list their ingredients in order of proportionality, so we can tell
from the label that the 3 Musketeers has more sugar than corn syrup, while the Charleston
Chew has more corn syrup than sugar, which is exactly what we'd expect, going by their
textures.
Marshmallow Fluff has more corn syrup than you see in a typical homemade Italian meringue
recipe. I suspect this helps with shelf-life by inhibiting crystallization.
You can also stop a crystal from forming by "inverting" the sugar — that is, breaking
sucrose down into a monosaccharide, which can be done with heat or acid. That's why
some confection recipes call for cream of tarter — to break down some of the sugars,
and inhibit crystallization.
Also the size of the crystals also matters. A 3 Musketeers bar has lots of very small
crystals in it. Dr. Hartel says one way to achieve this is by adding powdered sugar to
nougat as what they'd call "seed crystals."
"So when we do that in the lab, we pour the — the last thing we add is the powdered
sugar, make sure it's uniformly mixed, and then we pour that onto a slab. And if you
tasted it then, it's got a little bit of short texture to it, but it's the next day, then
it becomes really short, like a 3 Musketeers.
As any elementary school science student and tell you, it takes time for crystals to grow.
Now, the fourth and final thing that makes this different from this different from this
is the amount of air that you whip in.
"There's a big difference between marshmallow — which has a really low density, somewhere
down around .3 or .4 for a jet-puffed marshmallow — versus nougat, which is probably closer
to .9 to 1, and so it's much much more dense. And so, you can also change the texture of
nougat by changing the aeration level."
Air also helps to explain the mystery that you've probably be contemplating this entire
time, which is, why is nougat in everything?
"One of the mantras from the food industry is: The more air you can sell, the more money
you make."
Air is free, and nougat full of air. Free bulk for your product.
"I don't know about you, but when I was a kid and I have whatever quarter, what was
the candy bar that I wanted most? The biggest candy bar, and so I always picked a 3 Musketeers,
because it was the biggest thing."
I'm right there with you, doc. Though this is still one of my favorite candy bars to
this day.
Love that light, fluffy texture. So, what have we learned here?
Well, I think it's that candy making is a lot like bread making. Bread is all just different
combinations of some flour, some water, some yeast, some salt. Through very subtle differences
in the type of ingredient and the proportions and process, we get a world — a whole universe
of different breads. It's kinda the same thing with confections. Subtle variations in protein,
sugar, water and air give you a whole universe of different nougats for you to try. Get out
there and get one that speaks to you.