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Dessert

Caramel Coloring

A homemade caramel coloring made by boiling sugar with water to produce a dark brown, molasses-like syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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Caramel Coloring

Ingredients

Directions

Make the caramel

  1. Melt the sugar in a saucepan over medium-high heat.

  2. Cook until it turns dark brown and almost burned.

  3. Add cold water slowly while stirring continuously.

  4. Boil until the mixture thickens to the consistency of molasses.

  5. If too thick, add more water and boil again.

Store

  1. Pour into bottles and cork them for storage.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Caramelizes to form the dark brown color and the coloring's flavor.
Cold water
Dissolves the caramelized sugar into a liquid that can be thinned to the desired consistency.

The step that matters

Cook until it turns dark brown and almost burned. Caramel color depends on deep caramelization of the sugar. Stopping too early gives a pale, weak color, while going too far turns it bitter. Watching the color closely matters.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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