What is a Tootsie Roll?

[Fat Guy]

There has been a lot of activity today in my Facebook universe. Today I speculated on Twitter (and Facebook): "wondering: is a Tootsie Roll fudge? Taffy? What?"

There were quite a few comments:

"You are full of contemplation. I'll stay tuned for the verdicts."

"It's brown plastic."

"As someone who used to visit Atlantic City in her youth and look forward to the salt water taffy, I can say that Tootsie Rolls always reminded me of the taffy, but lacked the smooth, tooth destructive stickiness of taffy. Now fudge is a whole other animal, with its super dense and sugary chocolateness. And as we know, Tootsie Rolls have a much stronger sugar taste than chocolate. Perhaps they are a hybrid, a taffy fudge, or taffudge."

"It's like chewing wax."

"it's a secret, and you're not supposed to ask."

"its a chewy thing! with hints of chocolate and the colour, too..."

"It is sui generis. As a lawyer you are supposed to know those things."

"also it's a deus ex machina, like Rowan Atkinson in Love Actually."

"I recall the plastic lips and tiny bottles infused with syrup that one could purchase at the candy store of yesteryear. And that was like chewing wax. Well, actually it was chewing wax. But Tootsie Rolls have a sugary granularity all their own - with a hint of chocolate. Does anyone recall the product expansion into fruit flavors? Do they still make the fruity Toosie Rolls?"

"i LOVED those bottles and those lips....still remember the unique taste and viscosity, density, of the liquid filling. loved the way you could chew and then spit the wax...."

"fruity tootsie rolls sound very alluring. were they pastel or bright colours too?"

"As I recall, the fruity Tootsie Rolls were brightly colored. They were tasty, like a Starburst, but had that Tootsie Roll consistancy. I liked them."

"I remember the fruity tootsie rolls - kind of pastel colors -"

"D'oh. That's the problem with first person accounts. Pastel or bright, Mr. Owl? The world may never know,"

"I believe it is frequently described as a chocolate caramel treat."

I checked that last one and found the official Tootsie website, which uses the language "an oblong piece of chewy, chocolate candy" http://www.tootsie.com/

So what do we think?

[scubadoo97]

Closer to taffy than fudge. I would have to call it chocolate flavored taffy. And not good taffy at that.

[Fat Guy]

I agree it's closer to taffy than fudge, but I still don't know what it is. The official "chewy, chocolate candy" seems accurate but not particularly catchy.

[John DePaula]

It's chocolate caramel.

[Lisa Shock]

I was told by two instructors in culinary school that it was modeling chocolate.

[Fat Guy]

It's chocolate caramel.

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I don't know. Caramel is a pretty specific thing.

[azlee]

yup, chocolate and corn syrup is what it is. otherwise, known as modeling chocolate

[Fat Guy]

I was told by two instructors in culinary school that it was modeling chocolate.

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Tootsie Rolls do have the texture of modeling chocolate, and there's some ingredients overlap (chocolate and corn syrup), but I wouldn't call them synonymous.

One thing I noticed looking at the Tootsie Roll ingredients is orange extract. I have to eat one again to see if it tastes orangey to me.

[Chris Hennes]

For the record, Wikipedia lists the ingredients as:

ugar, corn syrup, partially hydrogenated soybean oil,condensed milk, cocoa, whey, soy lecithin, orange extract, and artificial and condensed flavors.

So more corn syrup than chocolate: what are the conventional proportions for modeling chocolate?

[Chris Amirault]

What the hell are "condensed flavors"?

[Fat Guy]

I just looked in a few places and got numbers like 200 grams chocolate to 60 ml corn syrup. Of course that doesn't tell the whole story because the chocolate includes sugar as an ingredient. Still, it's probably quite different from the Tootsie Roll ratio.

[Fat Guy]

What the hell are "condensed flavors"?

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The best kind.

[Lisa Shock]

For the record, Wikipedia lists the ingredients as:

ugar, corn syrup, partially hydrogenated soybean oil,condensed milk, cocoa, whey, soy lecithin, orange extract, and artificial and condensed flavors.

So more corn syrup than chocolate: what are the conventional proportions for modeling chocolate?

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Here are basic formulas for modeling chocolate. Remember that the chocolate(s) may have sugar and milk solids in them.

Dark

400g Dark Chocolate

55g Unsweetened Chocolate

225 ml Corn Syrup

White

15g Cocoa Butter

505g White Chocolate

140g Glucose

150ml Simple Syrup

Milk Chocolate

450g Milk Chocolate

225ml Corn Syrup

The tootsie roll isn't so far off from modeling chocolate, especially if you look at how chocolate is produced, with the cocoa being separated from the cocoa butter then reunited per the buyer's spec sheet for their chocolate. (I'm thinking Milk Chocolate here.)

I suspect the ingredients are far different from the original formula, if only because the artificial flavors have become more sophisticated over the years. (I don't recall the orange extract, I'd be curious to see an ingredients list from the 1960's.)

You also have the issue of softness. Modeling chocolate can get hard pretty quickly when exposed to air. I'd be afraid to bite into a thick chunk of it too aggressively. And, we know for a fact that the tootsie roll people are not concerned too much with precisely shaping the product -unlike modeling chocolate which is all about details.

The trans fat (partially hydrogenated soybean oil) is semi-solid at a wider range of temperatures than cocoa butter, and has a creamy texture that probably helps a lot with pliability. It also won't go rancid for years, so it adds shelf life.

The condensed milk and whey add flavor. This is an old candy, it dates from a time when milk chocolate pretty much was the only chocolate for many Americans. I recall seeing a study showing that even today, most Americans prefer milk chocolate's flavor profile over dark.

The lecithin is an emulsifier found in a lot of foods, but most notably those brown confectionery coatings that mimic chocolate in a lot of cheap candies. It's there to keep all the components in a unified mix.

Anyway, my point is that the sugar, oil, milk, cocoa, whey and lecithin pretty much equal the ingredients in a cheap milk chocolate bar, if you substituted out the fat.

Yes, the Milk Chocolate modeling chocolate recipe has about double the chocolate as corn syrup while tootsie rolls have more corn syrup -although we do not have exact percentage numbers. (could be equal amounts of corn syrup & 'chocolate bar') My guess is that more corn syrup helps again with pliability, and mouthfeel.

Just my $0.02

[maggiethecat]

Make real fudge or real taffy. Tootsie Rolls are nasty. Horrid.

I had a tangential career relationship with the TR company, a Chicago firm, and we got boatloads of free Tootsies. I was never tempted, not even once, and I could have filled my purse with them.

(When Vitner's dropped off a case of chips, that was another thing entirely.)

[Fat Guy]

I suspect the ingredients are far different from the original formula

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I'm not saying the following is literally true, but the Tootsie website claims:

"The long-lasting, delightfully chewable candy—the number one-selling chewy chocolate candy in America—has been made with the same recipe since 1896, when Leo Hirshfield, an Austrian immigrant, opened a small candy shop in New York City, producing the first individually wrapped penny candy from a recipe he brought from Europe."

I wonder what the number two-selling chewy chocolate candy in America is.

[nibor]

I don't know what they are, but I know what they look like.

[Fat Guy]

I like that the mini ones are called Midgees. (And the even smaller ones are called mini Midgees.)

[Kim Shook]

All I know is, about half the time that I try to make this damn fudge, I end up with Tootsie Rolls. I actually like Tootsie Rolls a lot better than the fudge !

[Fat Guy]

This is kind of weird:

"Leo’s recipe required the incorporation of the previous day’s Tootsie Rolls into each newly cooked confection, a graining process that Tootsie continues to this day. As such, there’s (theoretically) a bit of Leo’s very first Tootsie Roll in every one of the sixty four million Tootsie Rolls that Tootsie produces each day."

http://tootsie.com/products.php?pid=165

[Yajna Patni]

Dear Maggie the Cat,

"I had a tangential career relationship with the TR company, a Chicago firm, and we got boatloads of free Tootsies. I was never tempted, not even once, and I could have filled my purse with them."

I worked for 10 years at Harvard Medical School, and my office was in a building named for Mrs. Tootsie roll. I cant remember the real name, but we called it the Tootsie Roll Hall of Medicine. They never gave us a single free tootsie roll! Worse, every time Mrs Tootsie came for a tour WE were expected to buy bowls of Tootsie Rolls from OUR budgets to impress her.

I think Tootsie rolls are vile. I did not grow up in the US, and always thought you had to grow up with them to appreciate them. Good to hear of an American that dosn't like them either!

[Lisa Shock]

This is kind of weird:

"Leo’s recipe required the incorporation of the previous day’s Tootsie Rolls into each newly cooked confection, a graining process that Tootsie continues to this day. As such, there’s (theoretically) a bit of Leo’s very first Tootsie Roll in every one of the sixty four million Tootsie Rolls that Tootsie produces each day."

http://tootsie.com/products.php?pid=165

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That is kind of odd, it implies that they allow some sugar crystallization to occur -something that is undesirable in modeling chocolate. It would also explain the relatively high level of sugar, relative to corn syrup, in the mix.

About the ingredients, Wikipedia places the first mass production of hydrogenated oils at about 1909. -From a 1902 patent. And, soybean production didn't take off in America until after WWW1. So, I am a tad suspicious about the oil being an unchanged ingredient. It might have been used from about 1910 onwards, but, I seriously doubt that it was in the original product. (and, its presence is why I stopped eating these things in the early 1990's when the first transfats studies came out)

And, the first patent for soy lecithin was registered in July of 1915...

As for the recipe, note that it just says that he brought it from Europe. No mention of any great age to it. That's probably because conching wasn't invented until 1879. Chocolate products were pretty simple before that.

I personally think that original recipe was something along the lines of approximately equal parts of corn syrup and commercially available milk chocolate bars. Then, someone said 'hey, you could make this more cheaply by deconstructing the milk chocolate and replacing parts of it with less expensive stuff that just happens to add shelf life.' The main proportions of the recipe are probably the same, they've just refined some of the ingredients. -Kind of like soft-drink makers claiming that the recipe for Coca-Cola is the same as your grand-dad drank, despite the fact that most of the American stuff uses HFCS instead of cane/beet sugar.

[Kerry Beal]

Digging through all the professional confectionery recipe books that I have - I'm going with taffy. Confections are broken up in these books into categories that include 'taffy and kisses' or 'chewy candies'. Chocolate caramels actually fit in the chewy candy category along with chocolate taffy - and the formulas aren't significantly different. Caramels or taffies can be grained or non grained - grained caramels are referred to as Semi-chewing caramels - a bit shorter and easier on the teeth than non grained caramels.

Scraps are commonly added when making candy - for example a pulled chocolate kiss recipe in the book Choice Confections begins with 9 lbs of ground scrap.

[Lisa Shock]

Most of the taffy recipes I have found have a lot less fat than the tootsie recipe, sometimes none at all.

http://www.tootsie.com/gal_tour.php

Also, the product as shown at the beginning of this video does not look like taffy, at least it does not appear to have been pulled. It's a big thick leathery sheet. I'm sticking with modeling chocolate -with a loose interpretation of the term chocolate.

[maggiethecat]

Dear Maggie the Cat,

"I had a tangential career relationship with the TR company, a Chicago firm, and we got boatloads of free Tootsies. I was never tempted, not even once, and I could have filled my purse with them."

I worked for 10 years at Harvard Medical School, and my office was in a building named for Mrs. Tootsie roll. I cant remember the real name, but we called it the Tootsie Roll Hall of Medicine.  They never gave us a single free tootsie roll! Worse, every time Mrs Tootsie came for a tour WE were expected to buy bowls of Tootsie Rolls from OUR budgets to impress her.

I think Tootsie rolls are vile. I did not grow up in the US, and always thought you had to grow up with them to appreciate them. Good to hear of an American that dosn't like them either!

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Yagna: I'm glad we're together here: Toostie Rolls are really vile. Nasty. Horrid. Whyever would you eat them?" Pukey.

I am the most moderate and considerate of posters about food. At Tootsie Rolls I draw the line.

[ruthcooks]

Tootsie Rolls are disgusting. Leo must have been a pig farmer in the old country. No offense to pigs.

Now I have to go eat a GooGoo to take the taste out of my brain.