Why is calcium acetate used as a food additive in candy? - inb4 Breaking Bad jokes

[CEO of Pickles]

Calcium acetate is a calcium salt of acetic acid. It can be made by soaking limestone or marble in vinegar for a week. The chemical reaction looks like this:

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Calcium acetate was once a starting material to make acetone before the cumene process because it was cheap.
Other names for calcium acetate (standard) include calcium ethanoate (systematic), acetate of lime, and E263. Why E263? It's the E number for calcium acetate as a food additive.

Which leads to my question: What properties of calcium acetate allow it to be used as a buffer, sequestrant, and stabilizer in candy products?
Off-topic question: Which egghead autistic scientist kept a bunch of rocks in vinegar for a week and thought it was safe to eat?

 

[stares at error messages]

Stabilizers are things that make food not change its shape. If you have a soufflé you would want a stabilizer so that its poof doesn't deflate. It makes molecules more rigid.

 

[Bad Gateway]

Oh wow how interesting