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Dessert

Caramel Color

A liquid caramel made by boiling sugar with water until thick.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Caramel Color

Ingredients

Directions

Make the caramel

  1. Combine the sugar with just enough water to dissolve it in a small saucepan.

  2. Boil until the mixture turns dark brown and begins to blacken in the center.

  3. Carefully add the hot water to the burning sugar and stir until it becomes a brown liquid, similar to strong coffee.

  4. Continue boiling until the mixture thickens to the consistency of molasses.

Bottle

  1. Bottle the caramel.

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

Granulated sugar
Caramelises when heated, browning into dark colour and a bittersweet flavour.

The step that matters

Adding the hot water to the burning sugar. Hot water poured into very hot sugar causes violent steaming and splattering, so it must be added carefully. The water also halts the burning and dissolves the hardened sugar into a pourable liquid.

“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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