Our Love Affair with Sweet & Sour Confectionery

If you supply wholesale sweets to shops and supermarkets, then you’ll know that the British public has a great craving for the seemingly opposing tastes of sweet and sour confectionery. Let’s face it – it seems quite contradictory to call a boiled sweet or chocolate bar “sweet” and then serve up something that is sour or bitter and makes you shudder just a little bit when you taste it.

Opposites Attract

The truth is, that all too often, opposites attract. Just as the north and south poles of a magnet attract, many taste sensations that are seemingly unrelated or often even at opposite ends of the taste scale, seem to go together. For example, why do we add salt to cakes and chocolate? Sure, salt creates a chemical reaction that can positively affect other ingredients, but it’s also a taste enhancer and a mineral that our body needs and often craves. The same can be said of bitter and sour tasting foods and fruits.

One reason we may need to experience these contradictory flavors could be the simple fact that, as omnivores, human beings need variety in their diet. There’s an old story about letting new employees in a chocolate factory eat as much chocolate as they want because, after a while, they just get bored and stop eating it.

True or not (that’s a “not “in my house), the combination of sweet and sour provides a taste sensation that is different every time we experience it.

Layering Flavour After Flavour

Manufacturers and suppliers of wholesale sweets also take advantage of this in what is called “flavor layering”.

We are capable of detecting five primary taste sensations: sweet, sour, salty, bitter and umami. In fact, our tongues our covered with taste receptors that can differentiate between each of these tastes and at varying levels of intensity. This ability is what enables chefs and food manufacturers to produce food with a range of complex tastes rather than just one, bland taste.

Thanks to new combinations of flavors and tastes, alongside the tried and true old favorites, suppliers of wholesale sweets are able to provide a wide, new range of taste sensations. With flavors such as fizzy, sour worms (not as bad as it sounds); sour jelly buttons in apple, cola, lemon, and other flavors; and even a delicious white chocolate confection with lemon zest and sour cherry, fans of sweet and sour have more than ever to choose from.