Other forms: caramels
Caramel is sugar cooked until it browns, and the colour that comes of it. Salted caramel, caramel sauce, a caramel coat.
The browning is not simple melting, since the sugar breaks apart and builds hundreds of new compounds, which is where the flavour comes from. A few seconds too long and it turns bitter.
1nouncaramelSugar cooked until it browns, or that colour.
“She poured the caramel over the pudding while it was still hot.”
caramel is a food.
French caramel comes through Spanish and Portuguese from Latin calamellus, a little reed, from the shape of the cooled sugar.
Medieval Latin
cannamellis
Latin
calamellus
Portuguese
caramelo
Spanish
caramelo
French
caramel
English, today
caramel
Built from
French caramel, from Spanish caramelo, from Portuguese caramelo, dissimilated from Latin calamellus, diminutive of calamus (“reed”) (and a a doublet of chalumeau and shawm). Alternatively from Medieval Latin cannamellis, which is a compound of canna + mellis.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA