Mélasse noire

Treacle tart is crumbs, syrup and lemon. Drop the lemon and it is inedible.

Invert sugar has no acid at all. Zest and juice are structural, not optional.

Parkin needs a week in the tin before the oats and the syrup stop being separate.

Black sugar smothers most spices; dried ginger is loud enough to come back.

Treacle tart and clotted cream: the fat is all that stops the sugar.

Syrup binds where sugar only sweetens. That is why flapjack holds together.

Melt them together and it becomes a sauce that will not seize or grain.

Cure a gammon in it: sugar goes into the meat and comes back out as lacquer.

Dark sour crumb takes a bitter syrup better than any white bread manages.

Roasted barley against burnt cane. Both bitter, both already black.

Barrel and boiler. Stir it into a hot toddy and skip the honey entirely.

Piperine on invert sugar. A gammon glaze that tastes of neither on its own.

Burnt sugar into burnt bean. It sweetens and darkens with the same spoonful.

Two British jars of dark sticky opinion. On hot toast they finally agree.