How caramel candy is made

Salt goes in last, because added early it would break the sugar down as it cooked.

stations: 5
things upstream: 26
raw sources: 11
steps from the ground: 6

The short version

Caramel candy is cooked from sugar, glucose syrup, cream and butter. The sugars are heated first, then the dairy is added, which cools the pot, and the mixture is stirred and reheated to a firm-ball temperature of 120 degrees Celsius. Vanilla and salt go in at the end, because heat would burn off the flavor.

Heat the sugars

Sugar and glucose are combined and heated to 130 degrees Celsius. The glucose, from corn syrup or wheat, stops the sugar from crystallizing into grit later.

130 °C

Goes in
Sugar Corn syrup
Pour in the dairy

Cream and butter go into the hot syrup. The cold dairy drops the temperature of the whole pot.

Goes in
Pasteurized milk Butter Cream
Stir and reheat

The batch is stirred and brought back up to 120 degrees Celsius, the firm ball stage. Staying below the heat of full caramelization lets the milk itself brown and gives milk caramel its flavor.

120 °C
Add flavor last

Vanilla and salt are stirred in at the end. Vanilla added earlier would burn off, and salt added earlier would invert the sugars as they cooked.

Goes in
Vanilla extract Table salt
Cool and cut

The thick mass is left to cool until it is firm enough to slice into pieces.

End of the lineCaramel

Worth repeating

The brown color of caramel comes from three groups of polymers that form as sugar breaks down, and the buttery smell comes partly from diacetyl.
A 1977 salted butter caramel from Quiberon in Brittany was named best confectionery in France in 1980.
Caramel coloring is sugar taken to near-total caramelization, and it is what makes cola brown.