I mean sugar is white and we get caramel from sugar…..then why does caramel turn brown? And why does it even stay brown after solidifying?
I mean sugar is white and we get caramel from sugar…..then why does caramel turn brown? And why does it even stay brown after solidifying?
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The same reason almost ANYTHING turns brown while cooking (e.g. bread or onions or meat)… the Maillard Reaction!! (Wikipedia link)In short, when amino acids & sugars get hot, they react & turn brown. It goes a bit beyond that, but that’s what the link is for.Edit: I need to do some reading myself, caramelization and the Maillard Reaction are NOT the same thing!
The heat starts a cool chemical process that changes its colour and structure. By the time it’s done, it’s not sugar any more, and can’t be turned back into sugar
Caramel is basically cooked sugar. When the right amount of heat is added and the right chemical environmant is provided, the chemicals that make up sugar rearrange themselves into hundreds of new molecules, some of which look brown (mostly ones belonging to the groups called caramelans, caramelens, and caramelins), in the caramelization process.
It’s not a process that’s understood particularly well by science yet because of how complicated the reations are, so there’s always more to learn! But basically: it’s not simple sugar anymore, it’s complicated caramel.
As sugar heats it breaks into simple fructose and glucose then to polymers and volatile chemicals with complex flavors and scents and a brown color. As to ‘why brown?’ that’s just the color the sugar turns as it thermally decomposes.
Sugar molecules have a specific shape that makes white crystals. When you heat those molecules up, it causes a chemical reaction that change the shape of those molecules, and create some new ones. Some of the new molecules are dark in color and create what we think of as caramel flavor to the crystals.