Glossary
Browser cache
The browser cache is the local copy of page files - images, thumbnails, stylesheets, scripts - that a browser saves to disk so a site loads faster the next time you open it. It is a performance store rather than a list of visits, which is what makes it easy to forget.
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Where you see it
You never see the cache directly during normal use. It turns up as its own checkbox in the browser's clear-browsing-data panel, usually listed beside history and cookies as a separate item.
Why it matters
Clearing history and clearing cache are two different actions, and doing one does not do the other. Cached files sit under your user account on the device until something removes them, so on a shared or work machine the cache can outlive the history you tidied up. It also holds nothing the platform does not already know - deleting it changes what is on your disk, not what is in the site's records.