Gummy cola candies are one of those iconic flavors that can instantly bring back memories of a childhood trip to the store with a few dollars in your pocket and shelves of sweet treats calling your name. But have you ever wondered how they get their flavor? Even though some brands nail that classic cola taste, they don’t actually contain soda as an ingredient.
Cola as a beverage is a composite flavor, and there are countless variations on the recipe. Adding actual cola, made with water, high-fructose corn syrup, color, acid, and flavorings, to gummies would only dilute that flavor in the finished product. If you want to reproduce it, you need to go to the source.
Popular cola-flavored gummies share a few basic ingredients. Both Yupik and Haribo use things like glucose syrup, gelatin, citric acid, and carnauba wax, among other ingredients. You won’t find any mention of soda listed on the back of your package, though. When it comes to specific flavorings, Yupik only lists artificial flavor, while Haribo uses both natural and artificial flavor. Neither offers much insight into what exactly you taste when you eat one. Natural flavors can mean a lot of things, after all.
What is cola flavor?
The original Coca-Cola recipe from the late 1800s was flavored with coca leaves and kola nuts. Those flavors are where the name comes from, and it’s one of the fascinating facts about Coca-Cola. Modern Coca-Cola no longer uses kola nuts. It does use a special de-cocainized version of coca leaf extract, but it’s the only company in America legally allowed to import the leaves for that purpose.
Since only Coca-Cola can use coca leaf extract, that isn’t necessary for a generic cola taste. Most companies no longer use kola nuts, either, but wholesale flavor sellers may include them in their recipes. Flavors like vanilla, citrus oils, cinnamon, nutmeg, and coriander round out that signature taste.
We can’t say for sure what flavors Haribo uses, but some of the same ingredients found in cola drinks, especially the citrus, cinnamon, and vanilla, could make their way into the recipe. Unfortunately, they still didn’t fare well when we ranked Haribo gummy candies. If you sample a few different brands with those flavors in mind, you might start to pick up the subtle notes behind all the sweetness. Artificial flavoring used in some brands can make it tricky to pinpoint exactly what you’re tasting, but knowing what goes into cola can help decode it.
