Caramel is cooked sugar in its own right — the amber, richly flavoured product of heating sugar until it browns. The name covers a family: dry or wet caramel (sugar taken to a golden-brown liquid), pourable caramel sauce (that liquid loosened with cream and butter), and soft or hard caramel candies (a sugar-and-cream cook set to a chewy or firm sweet). Whatever the form, it tastes of warm toffee, butter and burnt sugar, from pale and honeyed to deep and bittersweet.