4. Sugar is white and sweet. If you heat it slowly in a pan, it changes to a brown substance
called caramel, which has the taste of toffee. If you heat caramel further, it becomes a
black material. Are sugar, caramel and the black material the same substance? What kind of
change is this?
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ARTICLE
The Science of Caramel
By Fine Cooking Editors
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From Fine Cooking #131, pp. 26-27
What do crème brûlée, toffee, and butterscotch have in common? Caramelized sugar, or as most of us know it, caramel. The flavor secret behind many classic desserts, this delicious ingredient can be tricky to make, and for some cooks, the process seems confusing and difficult. Here, we’ll demystify the science of caramelizing sugar-from how it’s done to what can go wrong when making it-so you can confidently create caramel confections at home.
What is caramel?
Caramel is simply sugar that has been cooked until it browns. Granulated sugar, or sucrose, has no smell and a simple taste-sweet-but when heated, it melts and darkens, developing complex aromas and flavors that taste decreasingly sweet and increasingly toasty. Heat causes sucrose to break down into its component sugars, glucose and fructose. Eventually, these molecules break down into other molecules that react with one another to create hundreds of new compounds, such as bitter-tasting phenols, fruity-smelling esters, and others that taste buttery, sour, nutty, and malty. These are the delicious flavors and aromas of caramelized sugar.
The caramelization process begins around 320°F, when crystalline sugar melts into clear molten sugar. At 340-350°F, the color changes to light straw or pale caramel brown. Taken to this temperature, caramel can be dripped from a spoon in thin strands and will become hard and glasslike when cooled, so you can make spun-caramel cages for desserts such as croquembouche. At 355-360°F, the caramel color progresses to medium brown and, when cooled, will still be hard but not quite as shatteringly brittle. When heated to 365-380°F, the caramel appears very dark brown and will cool to a softer, stickier texture. At this temperature, cream, butter, and vanilla are often stirred into the translucent caramel to stop the browning and create opaque-looking caramel sauces and caramel candies. At the upper end of this temperature range, the caramel continues to darken quickly until it reaches about 410°F. At that point, it’s known as black caramel or baker’s caramel, a less sweet and more bitter-tasting browning agent used to color everything from gravy to pumpernickel bread to soft drinks, like cola.
How is caramel made?
There are two classic methods for making caramel: dry and wet. The dry method involves simply heating sugar in a dry pan until it liquefies and browns. This requires careful attention, as the sugar tends to darken quickly and less evenly due to hot spots in the pan or the heat source. It helps to use a pan with a wide surface area for this method so the sugar is in a thin layer that heats and browns more evenly.
The wet method of making caramel calls for moistening the sugar in the pan with a little water. The water dissolves and distributes the sugar to promote even browning. Because the water boils off as the sugar caramelizes, the wet method also prolongs the total time that the sugar is heated, allowing more complex flavors to develop. And since the sugar browns more slowly, it’s easier to create a light or medium caramel instead of a dark brown one.
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Answer:
chemical
Explanation:
as it cant be changed into sugar