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Dessert

Bermuda Jelly Beans

A sweet candy made from glucose, sugar, starch, and water, molded into bean shapes and dried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Bermuda Jelly Beans

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the mixture

  1. Dissolve the starch in cold water.

  2. Add boiling sugar and glucose, then cook until it thickens.

Mold and dry

  1. Cast the mixture into bean-shaped molds.

  2. Place molds in a hot oven (400 °F / 200 °C) to dry for at least 6 days.

  3. Shift the wooden boards around 4 or 5 times during drying for evenness.

Finish

  1. Allow the centers to cool before removing them from the molds.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

What each ingredient does

Glucose
Keeps the candy from crystallising and gives it a chewy, moist texture.
Sugar
Provides sweetness and the bulk of the candy's body.
Starch
Thickens the cooked mixture and forms the gel structure that sets the bean shape.

The step that matters

Drying until fully set. Starch gels set as the mixture cools and loses moisture. If the beans are removed from the molds before they have dried and the centers have cooled, they stay soft, sticky, and may lose their shape.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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