The purpose of knowing why your doing things is so that you can tweak things and understand the implications. Sauteing onions is partially good because it caram

The purpose of knowing why your doing things is so that you can tweak things and understand the implications. Sauteing onions is partially good because it caramelizing some of the sugars. What other sugary things could I saute? I rarely exactly follow a recipe so it's important to understand what effects the steps have so you can experiment with them. I've been trying to perfect cookies for years.