The rheology of saltwater taffy

Abstract

Saltwater taffy, an American confection consisting of the main ingredients sugar, corn syrup, water, and oil, is known for its chewy texture and diverse flavors. We use a small amplitude oscillatory shear test to probe the linear viscoelastic properties of commercial taffy. At low frequencies, self-similar relaxation behavior characteristic of a critical gel is observed. The storage and loss moduli are power-law functions, with the same exponent, of the frequency. Such self-similarity arises from the distribution of air bubbles and oil droplets in the taffy, where air is incorporated and oil is emulsified through an iterative folding process known as “taffy-pulling.” Taffy obeys the time–temperature superposition principle. Horizontally shifting the dynamic moduli obtained at different temperatures yields a master curve at a chosen reference temperature. As a sufficiently high frequency is exceeded, taffy transitions from a critical gel-like state to an elastic solid-like state. The master curve can be described by the fractional Maxwell gel (FMG) model with three parameters: a plateau modulus, a characteristic relaxation time, and a power-law exponent. The master curves for taffy of different flavors can all be described by the FMG model with the same exponent, indicating that minor ingredients like flavorings and colorings do not significantly affect the rheology of taffy. Scaling the master curves with the plateau modulus and relaxation time results in their collapse onto a supermaster curve, hinting at a more fundamental time–temperature–taffy superposition principle. Guided by this principle, we hand-pull lab-made model taffies successfully reproducing the rheology of commercial taffy.