On Food and Cooking

but begins to break down and caramelize.
Boiling points depend on elevation. For
each 1,000 feet/305 meters above sea level,
subtract 2ºF/1ºC from every boiling point
listed.
How Sugar Crystals Form Sugar molecules
have a natural tendency to bond to each other
in orderly arrays and form dense solid masses,
or crystals. When sugar crystals are dissolved
in water to make a syrup, the water molecules
overcome that tendency by forming their own
bonds with the sugar molecules, surrounding
and separating them from each other. If the
dissolved sugar molecules in a syrup get too
crowded for the water molecules to keep the
sugars apart from each other, the sugars will
begin to bond to each other again and form
crystals. When the tendency of a dissolved
substance to bond to itself is exactly balanced
by the water’s ability to prevent this bonding,
the solution is called saturated.
The saturation point depends on