The History of Caramel

Hand dipped chocolates, even chocolate in general depends on its faithful companion caramel, more than any other. Some argue that chocolate’s BFF is nuts, but wouldn’t that be BFFs are nuts? Or is that BFsF are nuts? Regardless we can’t argue caramel’s importance on our road to confectionary addictions.

From an entire tray of hand dipped chocolates, my two favorites are the chocolate dipped caramels and the chocolate dipped turtles. I concede that turtles are made up of caramel and pecans – (I admit pecans are nuts.)

Why? Like any of our favorites, it’s the flavor & texture combination.

At the risk of offending our chocolate purists, who pride themselves in claiming the rich romantic Mesoamerican heritage of chocolate’s ancestry; caramel has an uncertain and questionable ancient past. Though caramel and caramel candies have been with us for centuries, their exact origins are a bit murky. We may question their family tree.

All my extensive research leads me a thousand years back to the Arabs. When I think about the Arabs, I don’t ponder the peace accords or middle east conflicts or even caramel. My mind reflects back to Ahab the Arab. Ahab however has nothing to do with caramel, so I’ll let you figure it out. Except maybe all the caramel historians got it wrong and they thought they were researching camels not caramels. But that’s your issue.*

Some say the Arabs first discovered caramel around 1000 A.D. Again, I don’t know who “some” really is, or is that are? But suffice to say, what we believe is there is evidence that around 1,000 A.D. the Arabs were crystallizing sugar to make what translators think the Arabs called a “kurat al milh” or “sweet ball of salt” or  “ball of sweet.” These first caramels aren’t like the caramel we enjoy today. That ball of sweet was a hard candy – rock hard – solid hard. That was due to the combination of sugar and water they were boiling over kettles.

Some say one form of this crystallized sugar and water mixture was used mainly in the beauty industry for waxing and sugaring—something I know nothing about. It was only later that the ‘ball of sweet’ became a confection.

Eventually, those tired of chipping their teeth, learned they could toss some milk and a little fat into the kettle and the results were a creamy texture with some stretchy consistency – basically more like our modern-day caramel.

Theory holds that somewhere in the mid 1600’s fat and milk became the more common tools to give caramel its chewiness.

Theory aside, we know that when milk solids and fats are heated with sugar and allowed to caramelize, we get some version of our current types of caramel. Note that we use the verb version (caramelize) of our noun (caramel) here. The Arabs probably didn’t know how to use verbs as nouns and so historians couldn’t accurately record the history of caramel and that’s why caramel’s origins are murky.

But in modern implementation of verbs and nouns, caramel remains a favorite treat because the nouns include sugar, milk, corn syrup and fat (butter). The verbs are ‘to heat’ and ‘to stir.’ Throw in an adverb; ’constantly’ and you have chocolate’s BFF.

Any wonder caramel has been so popular and remains a favorite sweet treat? It’s all about simple ingredients combined in just the right way. The results are delicious.

Jumping forward a few hundred years, caramel’s popularity increased greatly when Milton S. Hershey began his first successful candy business in 1886 called the Lancaster Caramel Company. Because you’re smart and you read what I said first, you quickly thought of the second candy company. But let’s stick with the first company Lancaster Caramel Company, which after it was established, was shipping caramel candies across the United States and to Europe.

Hershey’s introduction of caramel candies grew on a grand scale. Since then, caramel candy has taken on many forms and textures, such as sauces, creams, hard and soft candies, and glazes for foods such as popcorn.

Let’s get a little more granular. (Purposely a pun)

We’ve covered the fact that caramel is a combination of a few simple ingredients—sugar, water, fat, and milk. Now when combined in different orders, they will yield very different forms of caramel.

For instance, the traditional “dry method” of caramel making starts with boiling just your sugar, (yes, just melting the sugar dry) and adding the other three ingredients after. The other alternative “wet method” boils sugar and water together as one, and then adds the fat and milk later—this is what most caramel manufacturers do.

Depending on the method that you choose, your caramel will look and taste quite different—the dry method leads to a thicker, darker caramel that is used in hard candy, while the wet method results in the good stuff used for hand dipped chocolates.

Oh, and by the way, during the Lancaster Caramel Co.’s final years, Hershey shifted his focus toward chocolate and created the Hershey’s Chocolate Company as a subsidiary of Lancaster. Then in 1900, Hershey sold off the entire caramel business to The American Caramel Company for a sly $1 million thinking that it was just a fad and chocolate had more long-term potential. What’s he thinking now?

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