It’s been a perennial, generation-spanning default treat for… generations. Now, Caramel is coming back around on the big, historic-scale, limited-time menu rotation in a dance embrace with the emer-ging ‘newstalgia’ trend…
Nouveau-salted or plain, caramel is THE confection this season. And it’s been a default, dark-horse supporting actor on the treat scene for more than 1,000 years.
‘Sweet ball of Salt’
“Some say that the Arabs were the first to discover caramel around 1000 AD,” The Complete Guide For All Things Caramel tells us. “It’s believed that it was a crunchy kind of caramel created by the process of crystalizing sugar in boiling water. The Arabs called it ikurat al milhi’, which roughly translates into ‘sweet ball of salt’.”
Smithsonian magazine Senior Editor Beth Py-Lieberman adds, “I concluded that caramel dates to a moment in time when an American, Arab or French chef boiled some sugar and cream to just the right temperature and said, ‘Eureka!'” That was somewherearound, 1775, when the first recipe for Caramel as we know it appeared in a US cook book.
Unmatched versatility
Caramel’s popularity and longevity are also (probably) at least partly attributable to its ability to fill a wide range of roles and applications. From filling, to topping, to stand-alone melt-in-the-mouth treat, it’s been showing up all over the dessert, snack and confection map whenever other classic ingredi-ents – notably Chocolate – needed a dance partner.
Sugar, water and cream
Some folks are surprised to learn that real, authentic caramel contains just 3 ingredients: sugar, wa-ter and cream. A dash of vanilla became de rigueur early in caramel’s ‘modern’ history. And com-mercial brands today contain all sorts of other flavouring and texturizing additives. Caramel gets its trademark colour from the ivory hue of fresh cream and the browning, or caramelization, of the sugar when heated.
One early development was the discovery that the dairy component of caramel, cream, could be swapped out in favour for butter. Which introduced the notion that a sprinkle of salt could enhance the basic flavour of caramel brilliantly.
By any other name…
To paraphrase Juliet, in Shakespeare’s timeless love story, “What’s in a name? Caramel, by any other name, would taste as sweet…”
Along the way caramel has spawned many variations. Some of them are still around, and go by dif-ferent names. We still commonly enjoy English Toffee, Saltwater Toffee, Pralines, Nougats, Brittles and Sauces. One of the premiere presentations of caramel is the classic French Crème Caramel flan/custard (see photo, left).
But whatever it looks like, we always know caramel when we encounter it, by its unique, signature flavour.
My take
Being a bred-in-the-wool Scottish Lass, one short remove from the Highlands above Loch Ness, I am a true daughter of the Butterscotch tradition. The golden-amber cube was the first ‘candy’ I ever knew. And remained so until I started getting out in the world, visiting friends of non-Scottish origin, and Trick-or-Treating on Halloween. Even so, cellophane-wrapped individual caramels were a main-stay of holiday candy bowls and baskets throughout my childhood.
My Mom’s Dad always had a few caramels in his pocket. And her Mom carried a big bag in her purse to put down insurrections among her grandkids…
My questions to you:
Folks either love caramels or hate ’em. Much depends what they were brought up on as ‘confections’. Are you a ‘lover’? Or a ‘hater’?
If a lover, do you prefer butter- or cream-based caramel?
Apart from that, are you a fan of salted caramel – the focus and pivot of the current ‘swalty’ resur-gence of this truly classic treat?
And a caramel lover, what is your favouite form or application to show off caramel’s unique, historic, unmatched flavour?
Muse on that…
~ Maggie J.