CARAMELIZATION. Caramelization is the familiar browning of sugars through exposure to heat. The most common form of sugar—table sugar or sucrose—is a disaccharide, a combination of two monosaccharides: glucose and fructose. The two sugars can be easily separated using the enzyme invertase, which is essentially what bees do when they make honey from nectar. Fructose caramelizes more readily than glucose, so baked goods made from honey are generally a bit darker than those made with sucrose.

When sugar syrups are heated, they pass through several distinct stages, each having characteristics that are very useful to confectioners. Different sugars reach these stages at varying temperatures. The following table is for sucrose:

Caramelization of sugar begins around 310°F. When it reaches the light caramel stage (at 356°F for sucrose), many complex chemical reactions change simple sugars into a host of different...