Salted Caramel

What is it?

Salt in caramel is a French idea, from Brittany, where salted butter is the default and a caramel made with it was a regional speciality long before anyone thought to freeze it. The swirl here is a salted butter caramel, which is that recipe more or less intact. What the salt does is chemical as much as a matter of taste. It suppresses bitterness, and caramel has plenty of that once the sugar's been taken far enough to be interesting. Take the salt out and a caramel this dark doesn't taste less salty, it tastes duller. Cold complicates the seasoning. Low temperature blunts sweetness while leaving saltiness roughly where it is, so the balance a caramel sauce strikes at room temperature isn't the balance it strikes frozen. The brittle is the third element and the only hard thing in the tub.