Caramelization

Antonin Carême, the most famous cook and food writer of the early nineteenth century, was obsessed with finding out what made certain sauces more flavorful than others. Why, for example, are the pure juices from a simple roast chicken so much tastier than concentrated chicken broth, even broth made from whole chickens instead of bones? Carême attributed the source of meaty flavor to a substance he called osmazone. As it turns out, there’s no such thing, but there are compounds, including peptides, that contribute savor to meat dishes. Peptides are formed by the partial breakdown of certain proteins during cooking. When proteins are broken down completely, with acids or during digestion, they separate into their basic components, amino acids, which are essential to animal life. But it’s the interim compounds, the peptides and others, that are responsible for the flavor of a well-made jus.