From a single kind of molecule in the form of colorless, odorless, simply sweet crystals, the cook generates hundreds of new and different compounds, some of them small fragments that are sour or bitter,or intensely aromatic, others large aggregates with no flavor but a deep brown color. The more the sugar is cooked, the less sugar and sweetness remain, and the darke rand more bitter it gets. Though caramel is most often made with table sugar, its sucrose molecules actually break apart into their glucose and fructose components before they begin to fragment and recombine in to new molecules. Glucose and fructose are “reducing sugars,” meaning that they have reactive atoms that perform the opposite of oxidation (they donate electrons to other molecules). A sucrose molecule is made from one glucose and one fructose joined by their reducing atoms, so sucrose has no reducing atoms free to react with other molecules,and is therefore less reactive than glucose and fructose. This is why sucrose requires a higher temperature for caramelization(340ºF/170ºC) than glucose (300ºF/150ºC)and especially fructose (220ºF/105ºC).