Candy Temperature Chart

Candy recipes are really instructions for reaching a specific sugar concentration, and temperature is just the easiest way to measure that concentration while it's boiling. Candy Type looks up the classic sea-level target for each cold-water test stage -- 236°F for Fudge's soft ball, 248°F for Caramel's firm ball, 270°F for Taffy's soft crack, 300°F for Hard Candy's hard crack, 290°F for Toffee, and 240°F for Soft Ball Candy -- and Sugar Concentration estimates roughly how much of the syrup is sugar by that point, climbing from about 80% near the thread stage to about 85-87% through soft ball and firm ball, about 95% at soft crack, and about 99% at hard crack, following the published sugar-syrup stage chart. Altitude matters because water (and a sugar syrup) boils at a lower temperature as air pressure drops, so every stage's true target temperature drops right along with it. This calculator uses two separate, commonly-cited roundings for that effect: candy recipes are conventionally adjusted by about 2°F for every 1,000 feet of elevation, which is what Target Temperature uses, while the closer physics-based figure for plain water's boiling-point drop is closer to 1.8°F per 1,000 feet, which is what Water Boiling Point uses as a reference -- the two numbers are similar but not identical, and Water Boiling Point should not be read as using the exact same correction as the candy stages.

Altitude Correction is reported as a temperature difference, not an absolute temperature -- it's how many degrees to subtract from the sea-level number, so it should never be converted the way an actual thermometer reading would be. Target Temperature is simply Sea Level Reference minus that correction, in both °F and °C. What this doesn't replace: a calibrated candy thermometer checked in boiling water before you start (many home thermometers read several degrees off from the factory), and the fact that humidity, recipe composition (dairy, corn syrup, acid), and pot size all affect how a specific batch actually behaves even at the textbook-correct temperature. Because the altitude correction shifts every stage's target by the same handful of degrees, Candy Type is what actually drives Target Temperature -- at any fixed altitude, switching between Fudge and Hard Candy moves the target far more than the altitude correction itself ever does, even at this calculator's maximum 15,000 ft setting.