Real Chef's cook with Copper pans.
Well I do lots of sugar related food in copper pans as it holds the heat a lot better.
French Chefs prefer cooper
extract from an article in "Kitchenware direct"
"Stainless Steel traditional
The quality of SS depends on the nickel content. 18/10 stainless steel with 10% nickel content is the grade to look for although for pans 18/8 is also acceptable. How shiny it is depends on how it is polished.
Nerd fact: The number "18" stands for the chromium content, which is the same for all stainless steel. Chromium prevents rusting.
As Stainless Steel cannot conduct heat well, you either need an aluminium base or a copper one (a aluminium base needs to be thicker, up to 3 times thicker than copper). They’re bonded either by using “Brazing” or “Impact” bonding (eg Scanpan Impact), Impact bonding being the more favoured way as the process for Brazing bonding means that if you expose the pot to prolonged overheating or boil it dry for an extended period the base will separate.
BUT of course it’s not that easy and as aluminium and copper are soft metals, you may have heard of Tri ply, where there is an additional Stainless Steel protector under the copper or aluminium base. This is the pan I have and if it’s possible to love a pan, then yes I do. There are also “tri ply clad” like All-Clad where the whole base and sides of the pan or pot have 3 layers, not just the base, and obviously these will conduct heat up the sides well as well as the bottom. And stay away from any tri ply with a carbon steel core instead of aluminium, just because it’s heavier, doesn’t mean that it’s better. Carbon is a poor conductor of heat.
And as for which is a better base, copper or aluminium for heat control, copper is better but for retained heat, aluminium is better. French chefs prefer copper pans but a copper pan gets hot very quickly and cools off very quickly. This level of control is why copper has always been the French chefs' choice. If you have chef fantasies (and no I don’t mean Mr Darcy fantasies about Gordon Ramsay but being a chef), you may favour copper.
But the obvious advantage to the aluminium retaining heat is that when you go back for seconds, the aluminium will keep the food warm for longer whereas a copper base will cool off quickly."
