Häagen-Dazs · Desserts
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Dulce de leche isn't caramel in the usual sense. Caramel is sugar cooked until it browns; dulce de leche is milk and sugar cooked together slowly until the milk proteins brown alongside the sugar. That's a Maillard reaction and not caramelisation, which is why the result tastes of milk as much as of burnt sugar. It makes an unusually good fit for ice cream, since the base is already mostly milk and cream. The flavour extends what's there instead of sitting on top of it. It's a fixture across Latin America and Argentina in particular, where it goes into biscuits, cakes and pancakes as a matter of course. In a pint it's the sweetest thing at the plain end of the range, with nothing acidic anywhere in it to pull against.
