What Flavor Are Swedish Fish?

Malaco, a Swedish confectioner, developed the candy in the late 1950s for the American market.¹ In Sweden the same shape sells as pastellfiskar, "pastel fish". In the US it is made and sold by Mondelez International.

Why people say lingonberry

Lingonberry is a small, tart red berry related to cranberry. In Scandinavia it is everywhere: jam with meatballs, juice, desserts. People who grew up with it tend to say the candy matches.

The company has played along without confirming it. Mondelez has posted the fish on Facebook with captions like "born to be lingonberry", but it has never officially named the flavor.² Its product copy stops at "deliciously fruity".

Most Americans have never tasted a lingonberry, so they read the red fish as cherry or a generic red berry. Both readings are fair. The profile sits between them: berry-sweet, a little tart, with none of the seedy, green notes real berries have.

The other colors in assorted bags are less disputed, though not official either:

What the ingredients are doing

The US version is mostly sugar, invert sugar and corn syrup, set with modified corn starch. Citric acid, white mineral oil, natural and artificial flavor, Red 40 and carnauba wax are each present at less than 2%. There is no gelatin.

That shapes the taste. Gelatin melts at mouth temperature and lets flavor out fast. A starch-set chew does not melt. It has to be chewed and dissolved, so the flavor comes out slower and flatter, and lasts longer. Part of what people call "Swedish Fish flavor" is that slow, even release.

Invert sugar keeps the chew moist. The citric acid is a light touch, so the fish read sweet first and only slightly sour.

The Swedish version is a different recipe: glucose syrup, coconut and rapeseed oils, a beeswax coating, and carotenoid and chlorophyll-based colors in place of Red 40.¹ Same shape, two formulas, because each market has its own rules and expectations.

Building a Swedish Fish-type red

You cannot put the trademark on your pack. A flavor house will build a "red berry candy" or "lingonberry-type" flavor to the brief instead. Fruity esters usually make up the candy-berry body, with a small almond-cherry accent from benzaldehyde. It carries very little of the green, seedy material a fresh-berry flavor would need.

• Name the fruit carefully. Put "lingonberry" on the front and it becomes a characterizing flavor. Where the flavor comes from then decides the wording on the label. See natural flavor vs WONF.
• Real lingonberry is harder than it sounds. The juice is sharply tart and a little astringent — your mouth going dry, the way it does with cranberry juice. In a chew it shifts the acid balance and the color, and it is weaker than a built flavor.
• The color carries the flavor. A red fish that is not red gets read as something else. Moving from Red 40 to a natural red changes what people think they taste. Test color and flavor together, the way blue raspberry depends on its blue.
• Choose the acid on purpose. For a sour version, your choice of acidulant matters: malic acid stretches the sourness out longer than citric.

What this cannot give you is the actual recipe. The notes above describe how the candy tastes and how you would build something in the same space. Neither Malaco nor Mondelez has published the flavor. The Mystery Airhead is another candy that has done well by keeping its flavor unnamed.