Sugar pans

Sugar pans are vessels — usually metal, such as steel plate — where sugar juices are evaporated and sugar is crystallized. In traditional open-pan boiling and in modern vacuum pans, controlled evaporation concentrates syrup to supersaturation so that crystals nucleate and grow uniformly. Pan design affects heat transfer, circulation, and crystal size distribution, and skilled pan boilers once judged the strike entirely by eye and touch. Today’s vacuum pans are instrumented, but the underlying art remains: growing perfect, uniform crystals from a boiling syrup.