Caramel: What Sugar Becomes When You Heat It
Caramel is sugar cooked until it browns and turns nutty. The same process browns onions and steak, which is why cooks talk about caramelising almost everything.
Caramel is what happens to sugar at around 170 degrees Celsius: it melts, darkens and develops hundreds of new flavour compounds. The chemistry is not sweetening but breaking down, which is why caramel tastes less sweet than the sugar it came from.
- Browned sugar used in cooking. *Pour the caramel over the cream.*
- A chewy sweet. *A box of salted caramels.*
- A light brown colour. *A caramel coat.*
- Colouring for food and drink. *Caramel colour in cola.*
Word forms
| Form | Word | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Noun | caramel | Salted caramel. |
| Verb | caramelise | Caramelise the onions slowly. |
| Noun | caramelisation | Caramelisation begins at high heat. |
| Adjective | caramelised | Caramelised sugar. |
| Related | toffee | A slab of toffee. |
How it is used in a sentence
- Watch the caramel closely; it burns in seconds.The gap between golden and bitter is very small.
- Caramelise the onions for at least half an hour.Cooks use the word loosely here — onion browning is mostly a different reaction.
- Salted caramel appeared everywhere after 2008.A French pastry idea that became a global flavour.
Caramel, toffee, fudge and butterscotch
- Caramel — cooked sugar, sometimes with cream or butter added
- Toffee — boiled harder, so it sets firm and brittle
- Fudge — cooked with milk and beaten so it crystallises soft
- Butterscotch — made with brown sugar and butter, cooked less far
Through French from Spanish *caramelo*, probably from Late Latin *calamellus*, a little reed, from the shape of hardened sugar sticks. Caramelisation is distinct from the Maillard reaction, which needs protein as well as sugar and is what browns bread and meat.
Is it car-a-mel or car-mel?
Both are standard. Three syllables is usual in Britain, and both forms are common across the United States.
Is caramelising onions really caramelisation?
Only partly. Much of the flavour comes from the Maillard reaction between sugars and amino acids, but the cooking term has stuck.