Talk:Caramel

Food and drink Start‑class High‑importance

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Food and drink, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of food and drink related articles on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Food and drinkWikipedia:WikiProject Food and drinkTemplate:WikiProject Food and drinkFood and drink articles

Start

This article has been rated as Start-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale.

High

This article has been rated as High-importance on the project's importance scale.

Food and Drink task list:

To edit this page, select here

Here are some tasks you can do for WikiProject Food and drink:

Help bring these Top Importance articles currently B Status or below up to GA status: Agaricus bisporus (i.e. mushroom), Beef, Bread, Curry, Drink, Food, Ham and eggs, Soy sauce, Sushi, Yogurt
Bring these Top Importance articles currently at GA status up to FA status: Beer, French cuisine, Sugar
Bring these High Importance articles currently at GA status up to FA status: Apple, Burger King, Fish
Participate in project-related deletion discussions.
Delete unrelated trivia sections found in articles. Please review WP:Trivia and WP:Handling trivia to learn how to do this.
Add the {{WikiProject Food and drink}} project banner to food and drink related articles and content to help bring them to the attention of members. For a complete list of banners for WikiProject Food and drink and its child projects, select here.
Provide photographs and images for Category:Wikipedia requested images of food
Consider joining this project's Assessment task force. List any project ideas in this section

Note: These lists are transcluded from the project's tasks pages.

So the production of caramel ironically isn't based on caramelization? --Abdull 13:09, 2 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

that is correct. "Real" i.e. caramelized caramel is a lot darker and was more popular in old-fashioned candies. Source: Jason Huntzinger, candymaker at Preston's Candy & Ice Cream brain 21:46, 6 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Are you certain? It seems that caramelized lactose is involved, at least. There's some internal inconsistency here (see the section "Contradiction between Maillard and caramel articles" below.) Brad daniels 21:06, 12 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

History

I have removed the sentence: "Caramel was invented in Turin sometime before the 18th century." because it is unsupported by any evidence I can find. The word caramel is attested in English already in 1715 (OED). The etymology is not entirely clear, but appears to go through Old Spanish, so it doesn't seem likely that it was invented in Turin. What evidence is there for the Turin claim? I have checked Davidson, OED, Britannica, Littre, Larousse du XIX, and Grande Encyclopedie and see nothing about Turin. --Macrakis 19:42, 19 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Culinary disputes can become quite ridiculously nationalistic. Nations seem almost willing to go to war about who invented crème caramel and crème brulée. In fact Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking gives different origins for brulée in different editions, first calling its origin Creole and later English. Having lived in the Eastern Mediterranean for a year and a half, I quickly learned that you dare not call Turkish coffee "Turkish coffee" in Greece. You call it "Greek coffee" in spite of the fact that in Greek they call it "tourkiko" (Turkish). One Greek cookbook I bought there, stated that the fact that many Greek dishes had Turkish and Italian names was because the Turks and Italians had introduced their own names for these dishes during occupation. Similar disputes occur between Turks and Armenians as one might expect knowing how those two get along. Oh well. Mike Hayes (talk) 19:13, 18 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Pronunciation

WP is an international encyclopedia, so the usual pronunciation worldwide should come first. The pronunciation ['kærəˌmɛl] is not only the usual pronunciation outside the US (see Oxford dictionaries), but also one of the two (the other is ['kɑrˌməl]) used in the US. US dictionaries disagree on which is more common: Merriam-Webster says ['kɑrˌməl], American Heritage says ['kærəˌmɛl]; Random House (in the older edition I have) calls ['kɑrˌməl] Midwestern, but it would be useful to check a current edition. --Macrakis 22:01, 18 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The pronunciation of ['kɑrˌməl])has been the common pronunciation of the word until the recent affection we are seeing in North America to pronounce every letter in a word that, previously, had not been "sounded out" when saying the word. I suspect it won't be long before we are pronouncing "island" as "iz-land" in order to satisfy the apparent need to speak each word phonetically. I've spent less than an hour (now pronounced "how-wer") wondering when that word and others like it will be pronounced in such a way to satisfy the linguistically challenged masses.(That's my rant for the day. Thank you!) (unsigned comment)

It's certainly true that some words have changed their pronunciation to align more closely with the spelling. This may or may not have happened in this case. Do you have any evidence? After all, in the UK it is apparently pronounced ['karamel], which is not surprising since it comes from French [karamel]. In any case, we should record what the actual current pronunciation(s) are as well as any interesting facts about the history of the pronunciation. --Macrakis 01:16, 7 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

['kɑrˌməl] is a corruption caused by confusion with the mountain range Carmel. It is not a variant; it is a mispronunciation. It has nothing to do with elision and any attempt to present it as such is specious. Mike Hayes (talk) 19:28, 18 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It's definitely a variant. Everyone I know says ['kɑrˌməl]. 128.210.12.39 (talk) 09:27, 6 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I am baffled by the unsigned comment. Not only does it smack of self-righteous ego, the user seems to look down on any one with a different opinion than his own. How can one ridicule 'the linguistically challenged' and not know the difference between affection and affectation? I can't claim that I know from whence the variant pronunciation derives, but it is clear for the already cited reasons that ['kærəˌmɛl] has a broader, and older, user-base. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.246.21.98 (talk) 19:38, 7 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

External Links; Name brands

I have removed the link to Werther's Original as it smacks too much of brand-name advertising rather than referral to a factual resource. --HarmonicSphere 06:00, 28 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I just removed this section- let's try to keep all the commercials out of the Caramel article! brain 21:49, 6 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

These flavours are most often used in chocolate candies, like the Hershey's Pot of Gold collection of chocolates, or other boxed assortment of chocolate candies. However, they are also used as individual candies, such as the rum butter flavored and chocolate flavored caramel squares made by Primrose Candy Company, which are very common during Halloween as candy given out for trick-or-treat.

Caramelization

Caramelization is already mentioned in the paragraph underneath the first. User: Maurice45

Contradiction between Maillard and caramel articles

The following text:

The color and flavor of caramel candy are due not to caramelization, but to the Stecker degradation or the Maillard reaction, which occurs between an amino acid and a reducing sugar.

Contradicts the statement in the Maillard reaction article that caramel candies made from milk and sugar are not the product of the maillard reaction. It also refers to Stecker degradation, which I can't find by searching Wikipedia; is it purely a synonym for the Maillard reaction? If so, perhaps that clarification belongs in the Maillard reaction article.

Interestingly, I went to Wikipedia for information on caramel after encountering a similar seeming contradiction in Harold McGee's "On Food and Cooking" (Fireside edition p. 421) where he states that "[the] characteristic caramel flavor comes from browning reactions between milk proteins and milk sugar [which might imply Maillard reactions] as well as from the caramelization of lactose alone."

He also, states, though, that such candies are boiled to a temperature "only a few degrees higher than fudge," (which temperature he states elsewhere to be 238°F.) This implies that the caramelization temperature of lactose (not listed on the caramelization page) must be somewhere in that neighborhood. It's also a quite low temperature for extensive Maillard reactions, though I suppose if lactose can caramelize at that temperature, it can also engage in Maillard reactions.

This needs to be clarified both here and on the Maillard page, and the Caramelization page should be modified to include information on lactose. I do not have the proper references to make these corrections myself, but I'm hoping someone out there does. I suspect Belitz's Food Chemistry may have some information on the topic, but I seems to have lost my copy in a recent move. Brad daniels 21:06, 12 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I determined that the reference to "Stecker" degradation should be "Strecker" degradation, and that the Maillard reaction includes Strecker degradation (see e.g. [1], or anyplace in [2]). Since there is no article on Strecker degradation, I do not believe it warrants separate mention here.

I also confirmed directly with Harold McGee that lactose caramelization does in fact occur during the making of milk caramel. Brad Daniels 03:46, 14 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not confident that lactose caramelization can occur (though invert sugars can caramelize at these temperatures.) I've deleted the reference to lactose, and sent e-mail to McGee asking for further clarification. Brad Daniels 04:03, 14 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

How did this spawn a talk page? It's such an easy mistake to just correct and move on. An easy end to the argument of caramelization v. maillard reaction is to go in the kitchen, take some sugar, and cook it! There's no enzymes in table sugar, or in the pot/pan. Zephalis 16:20, 16 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

There's clearly no question that sugar will caramelize. The question is whether the process of making caramel candies such as the one on the caramel page employ caramelization or whether it instead relies on Maillard reactions to provide color. Caramel candies are, of course, made with milk, which provides both protein and lactose. This will all be even more clear if you read what Brad Daniels has written above. -CS —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.114.172.10 (talk) 05:01, 29 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I suppose if one wanted to be bothered, one could isolate each compound in the mixture and see which one browns at the lowest temperature. Every organic compound will burn and therefore every organic compound will start getting brown at some point. Mixing them will also alter these things but is it really that interesting? Mike Hayes (talk) 19:51, 18 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

caramel

can i make caramel at home —Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.163.203.148 (talk) 17:28, 15 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]