I Finally got it! Now I can relate!

[cakerookie]

Mr Mcgee I final got your book today. And it was everything that everyone has raved about. The chapter on Sugars chocolate and confectionary was worth the price alone. An excellent literary source on food science that I am sure I will refer to often.

On page 682 The Heating Rate Accelerates during cooking (sugar) toward the end of the paragraph it states that the heat should be lowered toward the end of the cooking process. My question is "If your set temp is 305F would removing the sugar from the heat at say 300F have the same effect since the temp will continue to rise even after removal from the heat? Or is there something I am missing?

Thanks so much for being here.
cakerookie

[Harold McGee]

Thanks for your kind words! It’s hard to answer your question definitively, because so much depends on such things as the intensity of the heat source, the kind of pan, how much sugar you’re working with, and so on. The point of the paragraph in the book is that the temperature of the sugar rises faster toward the end, so the cook needs to anticipate that and compensate by lowering the heat so that you don’t overshoot the temperature you want.

Harold