That’s a cute photo, I used to love doing these kinds of cooking experiments as a child. Great intro to chemistry and you get to eat it… If successful!
Your mention of the burnt sugar did make me think of something, however. It’s been on my list of things to research for a while:
How bad for you is burned sugar? Is it carcinogenic in the same way as burnt oil (oil heated past the smoke point I mean)? If so, is all caramel bad, even stuff that wouldn’t be considered burnt? And what about the fumes released during cooking?
All things come with a tradeoff so this is not intended with an anti-caramel agenda. Rather I’m thinking about minimizing health risk from tasty treats.
I should try making caramel from erythritol. I bet it has a cool minty taste.
Although it’s been quite a few years since I read Pinker’s book, my impression is that he is advocating exactly that. I don’t recall any dogmatism in the book, it’s very clearly a set of guidelines rather than a set of rules.
Actually my main takeaway from the book was that it was aimed largely at stereotypical “stuffy academic” writing, something which I’m sure Pinker has encountered a lot of in his career—and variants of which can be found here too.