Today’s recipe: Cook at 243º Fahrenheit
IMAGE: madehow.com
We’ll confess that it’s been a while since AndrewsGumWorld has deconstructed gum as something other than a cultural force, a litter problem, and/or a creative inspiration for commercials, photography, advertising and blissful bubbles.
So, we pause for a moment to remind ourselves where gum comes from (chicle, originally, but not so much any more…unless you buy Glee Gum).
While the image above may not be the perfect recipe (exactly how much chicle do you harvest….how long do you dry it and how hot is the air….and where, exactly, do you get those big pots?), but madehow.com has a great article on how modern chewing gum is made, including this nearly exact accounting of the ingredients to your modern stick of gum:
Federal regulations allow a typical list of ingredients on a pack of chewing gum to read like this: gum base, sugar, corn syrup, natural and/or artificial flavor, softeners, and BHT (added to preserve freshness). This vagueness is mainly due to the chewing gum manufacturers’ insistence that all materials used are part of a trade secret formula.
There’s a lot more detail to be found in the article, including the height of chicle trees (32.79 yards tall) and the importance of centrifuges, greased wooden molds, the exact size of a stick of gum (1.3″ x .449″) and more.
Chew on this, as they say….