Savory, Not Sweet

A little caramelizing adds huge complexity to the humblest meaty meal

BROWNING FOOD is an old piece of kitchen magic with roots well below the horizon at the dawn of history. As far as anyone can tell, it's been going on everywhere for as long as people have been cooking their food. But the science of what makes food brown has been only recently unraveled.

Two pieces of the same kind of food — be they onions, slices of bread or rumps of wildebeest — will taste differently if they are cooked in different ways. It doesn't take much imagination to know that something cooked over live coals or seared in hot oil will taste more interesting than the same thing cooked in water. The difference is largely a matter of temperature; unless it's trapped under pressure, water can never be hotter than its own boiling point, 212 degrees Fahrenheit, and at that relatively low temperature most food simply will not brown. And browning is the key to a world of flavor.

One big part of browning is the formation of caramel, which is simultaneously among the simplest and most complex foods imaginable. On the one hand, it is nothing more than browned sugar. But sugar, as it browns, disintegrates and reassembles itself into a composite of chemicals that run the gamut from sweet and nutty to bitter and sour. In between are whiffs of sherry in oak, hints of ripening apples and suggestions of melted butter.

But there is more to browning than simple caramelization of sugars. In "On Food & Cooking," food scientist Harold McGee describes "Maillard reactions," the browning that occurs in foods that are not primarily sugars, named for Louis Maillard, a French physician who chronicled his observations of these reactions around 1910.

Since they involve more complex chemicals to begin with — proteins and fats in addition to carbohydrates — Maillard reactions are even more complex than caramelization. At high temperatures, the sulfur and nitrogen compounds in protein separate and come back together like bits of colored glass inside a kaleidoscope to form new aromatic chemicals that evoke everything from wood smoke, onions, leather and chocolate to a host of floral and vegetal delights impossible to pin down.

Not long ago, I was thinking about all this as I browned a piece of beef in a shallow puddle of melted sugar. I was lost in a chemically inspired reverie when my 12-year-old, who was lured away from his video game by the heavenly aromas wafting from the kitchen, brought me back to earth.

"Dad!" he said. "That smells so good! What are you making?"

"I'm making beef in caramel sauce," I said.

"Sounds gross," he countered matter-of-factly. "But it smells amazing. When will it be ready?"

Caramel with savory dishes does sound gross if you think of caramel as candy, but to me, it makes perfect sense. Think of "Kitchen Bouquet," the stuff in the little brown bottle that mid-century homemakers used to add to dishes like onion soup and roast beef to make them brown. The flavor-enhancer or whatever it is called is essentially caramel.

I started using a small amount of caramelized sugar to add flavor and color to savory dishes years ago, and eventually it occurred to me that the caramel itself would make a good starting point for simple home-cooked dishes like braised meats. And thanks to Maillard reactions, which McGee describes as "even more fortunate and complex" than caramelization, the results are phenomenal. It may be science, but it tastes like magic.

Greg Atkinson is a contributing editor for Food Arts magazine and a culinary consultant. He can be reached at greg@northwestessentials.com. Barry Wong is a Seattle-based freelance photographer. He can be reached at barrywongphoto@earthlink.net.