Caramelization

With inspiration from the delicious sweets from today’s class, I decided to look into another carbohydrate reaction that makes for sweet desserts: caramelization.

Caramelization apparently is the result of the decomposition of more complex carbohydrates (ex. sucrose) into simpler sugars (ex. glucose and fructose), followed by a condensation reactions between these simple sugars! This occurs at higher temperatures, and the water produced from the reaction boils out. The new compounds produced, like diacetyl, make for the flavor of caramel.

Although the Maillard reaction, which was mentioned in class, also results in “browning,” it is different from caramelization in that it involves reactions between a sugar and an amino acid, rather than between sugars – specifically, an oxidation reaction between the amino acid’s amino group and the sugar’s carbonyl group.