Caramel: The Complete Guide to Caramels, Dulce de Leche, Goat's Milk Caramel, Salted Caramel and How Sugar Browns
Here is the thing nobody tells you about caramel: most of what you love about a chewy caramel is not caramelization. When plain sugar is heated past about 320°F it breaks apart and rearranges into hundreds of new compounds, bitter, nutty, fruity and brown, and that is caramelization in the strict sense. But the moment you add cream or butter or milk, a second, older reaction takes over. Proteins in the milk react with the sugars at lower temperatures, and that reaction, the Maillard reaction, is what gives a caramel candy, a jar of dulce de leche and a bottle of goat's milk caramel their deep, toasty, slightly savory flavor. A caramel is a cousin of a seared steak, not just of a spoonful of burnt sugar.
That distinction explains most of the category. It is why dulce de leche can be made without ever caramelizing anything, why goat's milk caramel tastes different from cow's milk caramel, why salt does something remarkable to all of them, and why the temperature on a candy thermometer decides whether a caramel is a sauce, a chew or a brick. This guide covers the chemistry in plain language, the regional styles worth knowing, the Breton story behind salted caramel, and how to buy, use and store each kind.
Two ways to make something brown and sweet
Dry caramel is sugar alone, heated until it melts and colors. It is used for the glass-like crack on a crème brûlée, for spun sugar, for the bitter amber sauce under a flan. Pushed further it turns bitter and then black. There is no dairy in it and no chew.
Milk caramel is sugar cooked with cream, butter or milk. Some caramelization happens, but most of the flavor and all of the color come from the milk proteins browning. The final texture depends entirely on how much water is left when you stop, which the thermometer tracks: around 235°F the mixture sets to a soft, pourable sauce; around 245 to 250°F it becomes the firm, chewy caramel of a wrapped candy; above 300°F it is hard toffee. A few degrees separate a caramel you can bite from one that removes fillings, which is why caramel makers talk about temperature the way winemakers talk about harvest dates.
The chewy caramel
The wrapped caramel of candy shops is sugar, corn syrup or glucose to prevent crystallization, cream and butter, cooked slowly to the firm-ball stage and cut while warm. Slow cooking matters. A caramel rushed over high heat browns unevenly and tastes scorched at the edges; one cooked gently develops a rounder, more complex flavor. McCrea's Candies, in Massachusetts, cooks its caramels in small copper batches and finishes each flavor by hand, and the range shows how far the form can stretch. Classic vanilla is the reference chew, soft, buttery and clean. Cape Cod sea salt is the one to give a skeptic. Deep chocolate folds cocoa into the cook rather than coating the outside, so the chocolate is part of the chew. Tapped maple uses real syrup and tastes like the dark grades described in our maple guide. Single malt Scotch and rosemary truffle sea salt are the two for people who think they have had every caramel; the first is smoky and grown-up, the second savory enough to serve with cheese.
Dulce de leche
Dulce de leche is milk and sugar cooked very slowly, for hours, with a little baking soda to encourage browning, until the water is mostly gone and the mixture is a thick, spreadable, deep-tan cream. It is almost entirely a Maillard product; nothing in it is ever hot enough to caramelize in the strict sense, which is why it tastes milky and toasty rather than bitter. Argentina and Uruguay both claim it, with the usual legends about a distracted cook and a pot of sweetened milk left on the fire in 1829, and both countries eat it at every meal that permits it: on toast at breakfast, between the shortbread halves of an alfajor, folded into ice cream, spread on a slice of cheese.
San Ignacio's dulce de leche, made in Argentina the traditional way, is the jar to keep. Warm a spoonful to loosen it and pour it over ice cream or a baked apple, swirl it into brownies before baking, spread it on toast with a pinch of salt, or use it as the filling for a layer cake. It also stirs into hot milk to make something between a latte and a dessert, which pairs well with the drinking chocolate on our shelf.
Cajeta and goat's milk caramel
Cajeta is Mexico's version, from Celaya in Guanajuato, made with goat's milk, and the milk changes everything. Goat's milk has a different fat and protein structure and a faint tang, and cooked down it produces a caramel that is lighter in color, less cloying and more complex than a cow's milk version, with a savory edge that keeps you eating. The American version of the idea comes from Vermont: Fat Toad Farm's traditional goat's milk caramel is made on a family goat farm in the cajeta tradition, slow-cooked in small batches, and it is the first caramel to reach for as a sauce. Pour it over vanilla ice cream, roasted pears or a slice of pound cake; stir it into coffee; drizzle it over a wedge of aged cheddar or a soft goat cheese, where the tang of the milk meets its source.
Salted caramel and where it came from
Salted caramel has a birthplace and a date. In 1977 the chocolatier Henri Le Roux, working in Quiberon on the coast of Brittany, made a caramel with the region's salted butter and crushed nuts and called it caramel au beurre salé. Brittany had used salted butter for centuries, partly because the region was historically exempt from France's salt tax, and Le Roux's caramel turned a local habit into a confection that conquered the world over the following three decades.
The science behind the appeal is simple. Salt suppresses bitterness, which lets the browned flavors read as toasty rather than burnt, and it sharpens sweetness by contrast, so a salted caramel tastes more caramel-like than an unsalted one. The right salt is a flaky finishing salt with large crystals that dissolve slowly, which is why our finishing salt guide is worth reading before you make a batch. A few flakes on top of a store-bought caramel, a spoon of dulce de leche or a pour of goat's milk caramel does most of what the Breton original does.
Caramel in a glass
Caramel syrup for drinks is a different animal from all of the above: a sugar syrup cooked to a caramel and then diluted so that it pours and dissolves cold. Most of what coffee chains use tastes of little but sweetness. Bacanha's caramel syrup, from the French organic syrup house we wrote about at length, tastes of actual caramelized sugar with a faint bitterness, and it makes a serious caramel latte, an Old Fashioned variation with a caramel note in place of plain sugar, and, with soda water and a squeeze of lemon, a surprisingly adult soft drink.
How to buy caramel
Read the ingredient list for dairy. A chewy caramel made with cream and butter lists them; one made with palm oil and milk powder will be waxy and one-dimensional. Dulce de leche should be milk, sugar and little else; "caramel sauce" with corn syrup first is a different product. For goat's milk caramel, the milk should be the first ingredient. Vanilla should be vanilla. Salt should be a named sea salt when the maker cares, and the good makers do. And smaller batches mean gentler cooking, which you can taste.
Storage
Wrapped caramels keep for months at cool room temperature in a sealed container; heat softens them and humidity makes them sticky, and the refrigerator makes them hard and dulls the flavor. Dulce de leche and goat's milk caramel are shelf-stable until opened, then belong in the refrigerator for a few months; both stiffen when cold and loosen again with a few seconds of warming. Caramel syrup keeps in the cupboard. If a jar of dulce de leche develops a dry, darker layer on top, stir it in; it is concentration, not spoilage.
Where to start
For the candy dish: a box of McCrea's sea salt and one of the single malt. For breakfast: San Ignacio on toast. For dessert: Fat Toad Farm over anything cold. For the bar and the espresso machine: Bacanha. Everything is in our caramel collection, beside the chocolate it so often ends up wrapped in, and it ships nationwide from theambrosianpantry.com, or come taste at 263 Josephine Street in Cherry Creek, Denver. Ambrosia, according to the poets, was sweet, golden and reserved for the immortals, which sounds a great deal like a warm spoon of goat's milk caramel.
