Caramel is an orange-brown confectionery product made by heating a range of sugars. It can be used as a flavoring in puddings and desserts, as a filling in bonbons or candy bars, or as a topping for ice cream and custard.
A saucer of liquid caramel
Milk caramel manufactured as square candies, either for eating or for melting down
Omar caramel candies
Sugar is the generic name for sweet-tasting, soluble carbohydrates, many of which are used in food. Simple sugars, also called monosaccharides, include glucose, fructose, and galactose. Compound sugars, also called disaccharides or double sugars, are molecules made of two bonded monosaccharides; common examples are sucrose, lactose, and maltose. White sugar is a refined form of sucrose. In the body, compound sugars are hydrolysed into simple sugars.
Sugars (clockwise from top-left): white refined, unrefined, unprocessed cane, brown
German sugar sculpture, 1880
Sugar cane plantation
Two elaborate sugar triomfi of goddesses for a dinner given by the Earl of Castlemaine, British Ambassador in Rome, 1687