Yeah, that’s interesting. It’s right in the name, too. You are caramelizing the sugars, not the proteins.

So the baking soda does speed up what little maillard is going on, so it browns faster, but it doesn’t caramelize faster.

TIL!

I usually do overnight large batch caramelizing so it hasn’t mattered. Big bag of onion cubes in the freezer so I never do it in a pan.