As can be determined from the name, hard candy is a type of candy, or sweet, that is hard. They are also commonly known as boiled sweets. Hard candies are intended to dissolve slowly in the mouth
Hard candy is made by boiling a sugar syrup, which can be made from different sugars - fructose, sucrose, glucose, or other sugars - 160°C (320 °F) and then cooling it. The boiled syrup, as it reaches room temperature, becomes stiff and brittle. The finished product is almost completely sugar, although sugar-free variants do exist.
Boiled sweets are not simply boiled and cooled in their manufacture. Flavourings and colourings would be added to the sugar after it is boiled, and the resulting mixture can be made into individual confections. Before it cools it can be moulded, rolled or folded into other shapes, one of which is the traditional British seaside confection called rock.
Many early hard candies were actually medicinal in use, especially for sore throats. Sucking on a boiled sweet can help a sore throat anyway, and prescriptions would also be made more palatable by adding them to hard candies - sugar-coating them, in other words. Throat lozenges are still made into hard candies, although these are sugar-free these days, which use a sugar substitute as well as an artificial sweetener, such as aspartame, but most boiled sweets are no longer medicinal in nature, and there are many different types, shapes and flavours available.
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