Fleur de Sel and Smoked Salt Caramels
Like the inventor of the airplane, the creator of fleur de sel caramels is contested. Was it George Cayley, father of aerodynamics, who invented it in 1799; or Jean-Marie Le Bris in his horse-drawn “albatros artificiel”; or John J. Montgomery in his glider; or Otto Lilienthal, Octave Chanute, or Percy Pilcher? Some say it was the Wright brothers. The arguments tend to get political and technical. The French have been making fleur de sel caramels for some time. Some say salted caramel came from the New World, where salt water was used in confectionary. But it’s all but certain they never made use of great salt. However, the Americans, prone to exaggeration, have succeeded in burning the sugar to the point where the caramel treads somewhere between a dessert topping and a meal. Blend burnt caramel with good salt and little stars of flavor glimmer from within the impenetrable vastness of the caramel. Look skyward. Machines for soaring among the stars might never have been invented had the salted burnt caramel come first.
