Yesterday’s
musings on the sweet subject of ‘mocha’ made me think of other sweet treats,
and I realised that, apart from a few paltry mentions, and recipes for caramelcoffee and caramel oranges, I have hardly given that wonderful browned sugar
flavouring much mention.
The Oxford English Dictionary is very minimalist
on this important topic. Essentially it says that the origin of the word is
uncertain. It quotes one authority who suggests that the word represents the
Latin calamellus,
meaning little tube, ‘in reference to its tubular form.” I have no idea what is
tubular about caramel, do you? Another authority thinks it is from medieval
Latin cannamella, indicating sugar-cane. Did the Romans know about
sugar-cane? A third, ‘Arabic source; is also conjectured. Sadly then, no real
insights into the history or meaning of caramel there.
As for the
definition of caramel, the OED is also rather minimalist and decidedly dull on
the topic. Two explanations are given:
a. A black
or brown porous substance obtained by heating sugar to about 210° C., by which
it loses two equivalents of water; burnt sugar. It is used for colouring
spirits, etc.
b. A
kind of ‘candy’ or sweet.
I much prefer the entry in The Steward's Handbook and
Guide to Party Catering (Chicago,
1889) by Jessup Whitehead, although I don’t believe for one minute the bit about
Viscount Caramel!
CARAMEL Burnt sugar. Said to have
been named from a Viscount Caramel. It is the stage in
boiling sugar when the boiling ends
and it begins to turn brown. At that stage it has a pleasant taste
like some brown candies.
CARAMELS Name given to various kinds
of candies, generally of a dark sort.
CARAMEL COLORING Sugar burnt in a
frying pan till it smokes and turns black, water then added, boiled, strained;
used for giving the brandy color to soups, jellies and spirits.
CARAMEL PUDDING Sugar melted brown in
a mould and run all over the interior while cooling; rilled up with custard of
cream and yolks; steamed.
CARAMEL ICE CREAM Brown almond nougat
made by melting sugar to caramel with almonds mixed; when cold, pounded fine
and mixed in ice cream instead of sugar.
There is a
type of ‘caramel’ that the OED does not consider. It is demonstrated nicely in
the following recipe:
Fowls a la Mommorency.
Having a Fowl, singe, gut, truss, and
blanch it over a Charcoal Fire; then lard it with thin Bacon j being larded,
split it in the Back, put into the Belly a small Ragoo with Sweetbreads of
Veal, Champignons, Truffles, and some Bottoms of Artichokes; put it a stewing
in a Stew-pan with Slices of Bacon, Ham, and Veal j being stewed, take it off
and put in it a little Broth j let it have a Boil, then strain it off in a Silk
Strainer, and skim the Fat well off; then set it on again and let it stew 'till
it turns to Caramel, then put it in your Fowls, and put your Bacon Side into
the Caramel, put it upon hot Cinders, that it may glaze as it should: Being
ready to serve up, put a Cullis of Ham, or a Sauce made the Italian Way into
your Dish, then your Chickens over it, and serve it up hot for an Entry.
The whole
duty of a woman, or, an infallible guide to the fair sex. (1737)
For most of us of course, caramel is an achingly sweet,
dark, flavour which stops just short of burnt – like toasted sugar, perhaps.
Surprisingly, recipes for caramel sauce do not appear in cookery books until
the second half nineteeth century – rather later than I would have
guessed. For those of us who like to
gild the lily, here is a caramel custard with caramel sauce.
Caramel Custard.
4 cups scalded milk, 5 eggs, ½
teaspoon salt, 1 teaspoon vanilla, ½ cup sugar.
Put sugar in omelette pan, stir
constantly over hot part of range until melted to a syrup of a light brown
color. Add gradually to milk, being careful that the milk does not bubble up
and go over, as is liable on account of high temperature of sugar. As soon as
sugar is melted in milk, add mixture gradually to eggs slightly beaten; add
salt and flavouring, then strain in buttered mould. Bake as custard. Chill and
serve with Caramel Sauce.
Caramel Sauce.
½ cup sugar, ½ cup boiling water.
Melt sugar as for Caramel Custard,
add water, simmer ten minutes; cool before serving.
The Boston Cooking School Cook Book, (1896) by Fannie Merritt Farmer.
Quotation for the Day.
At about the
age of ten, during a late summer visit to Sears to buy school clothes, I became
aware of the concept of candy by the pound. This was revolutionary. Here were
entire stalls of candy, naked as the day they were born, piled up two feet high
and God knows how deep. What it was beauty.
Steve Almond
3 comments:
From History of Food, by Maguelonne Toussaint-Samat (translated from French by Anthea Bell):
(On the source of the name:)
[the Arabs] obtained a new product, dark brown, sticky and highly fragrant: kurat al milh, or 'ball of sweet salt'.
Of course! I should have checked this further. Thanks for letting us all know about this. The authority who suggested an arabic origin was clearly correct. I am now quite happy.
Janet
Toussaint-Samat is unfortunately completely unreliable. It is full of nonsense and has no footnotes, so you can't trace things back. It seems to be compiled from a lifetime of clippings uncritically collected from all manner of sources, both good and bad. Since there is no way to tell the good from the bad, it's best just to ignore it.
An example of her nonsense on the topic of sugar: "The Arabs installed the first 'industrial' sugar refinery on the island of Candia or Crete -- its Arabic name, Qandi, meant 'crystallized sugar'." Qand indeed means 'sugar', and qandi means 'candied', but they have nothing to do with Crete or the name Candia, which comes from the Arabic word khandaq 'moat'.
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