maltol

Maltol turns up wherever this library's kitchen browns flour or sugar. In the egg-free brownies it forms as raw sugar melts into ghee and the batter bakes, the warm, caramel-bready sweetness of a fresh brownie that counts for more here because the recipe leans low on sugar. In the protein oat waffles it forms the same way against a hot iron, fed by the pinch of real sugar in the batter alongside the crisp. The Japanese curry is the more interesting case: maltol there is formed by the flour alone, browning to a peanut-butter colour in the skillet, and it reads as caramel sweetness even though the dish adds no sugar at that stage, half the reason a browned roux tastes better than a pale one.

The compound is C₆H₆O₃, and in this library it traces to two ingredients doing the same job under heat, flour and sugar, whichever one is browning. It is traced in three recipes, and in every one the note reads the same way: caramel where none, or not much, was added.