To prove this we are going to make something with just a few simple ingredients:
- 1 cup of white sugar
- 1 cup of heavy cream
- 1 Tbls of butter
- 1 tsp of vanilla and a pinch of salt.
In a heavy bottom pot over medium heat, add the sugar and about a quarter cup of water and bring to a boil. If you were to taste this (carefully) you would notice only one thing: sweet.
Now let it continue to boil. As the water cooks off the bubbles will begin to stack, and then slow.
Boil a little longer and you’ll start to notice the colour begins to change.
Reduce the heat and give the pot a bit of a swirl. The colour will continue to darken.
Remove from the heat, and add the 1 cup of cream. It is going to bubble like crazy, give it a whisk, and return it to the heat to help the sugar dissolve again.
At this point you can turn off the heat, add the butter, vanilla, and salt. Wisk to combine.
Give it another taste, carefully since it’s really hot. Now what do you notice? First of all it’s not nearly as sweet. And there is now flavour and depth.
When we first started boiling the sugar and water the temperature was about 212 F (100C). As the water cooked off the temperature began to rise. By the end, after all the water was cooked off, the temperature was able to reach 338F. This is where magic happens, as the sugar breaks down and rearranges to form tasty new compounds. That is what changes good cooking into great.
The lesson here is that when water is present the temperature will never get high enough to really caramelize the sugars and all you’ll be left with his bland, flavourless food. If you had added the cream at any point before the sugar caramelized you’d end up with slightly sweetened cream. But this sounds like baking right? What does it have to do with cooking? Check out my next blog post and we’ll put this principle to action.