Caramel, or Burned Sugar
Ingredients
Directions
Make the caramel
Put the sugar in an old tin cup over a brisk fire.
Stir until the sugar is dark and smells burned.
Add the cold water and let it boil gently for a few minutes, stirring constantly.
Finish
Remove from heat and let it cool before bottling for use.
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 when heated, giving the dark color and toasty, bittersweet flavor.
- Water
- Dissolves the browned sugar into a pourable liquid syrup.
The step that matters
Stir until the sugar is dark. Sugar browns quickly near the point of burning, and past that point it turns bitter. Constant stirring spreads the heat evenly so the color develops without scorching.
“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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