Do you know about Cream of Tartar? Have you ever looked on the ingredient label to see what it is? NO? Well, allow me to save you the time... there is NO LABEL. Yeah - nothing. I'm seriously considering changing my Lemon Cake recipe in order to avoid this label-less product, because I'm not sure what to put on my label list for the FDA! Anyway, in an effort to find out what this egg white stabilizer is made of I started digging. I came up with....NOTHING MUCH! So, I called my dad. He's a chemist - he should know! So he told me... Cream of Tartar is "KHZ4H4O6" - gee, thanks! (that translates to Potassium Hydrogen Tartrate, in case you were wondering!) Actually this information was rather helpful. Then my dad went on to tell me that "Cream of Tartar" comes from fermented grapes. When wine is being made, the grapes sit in a barrel to ferment. When the grapes/juice is ready - it is poured from the barrel and the powdery acid left behind (at the bottom of the barrel) is "Cream of Tartar". So - there you have it, the DREGS of the wine barrel is what you are using to stabilize your egg whites!! Now, tell me...... who figured that out?!
3 comments:
You should put that on the form... I bet the FDA doesn't even now the chemical name for it LOL.
I can see the frustration for you for all this, but I understand as a customer, that the FDA is making sure products aren't being sold that could kill people.
I knew that (not the KHZ thing). I had to look it up when I was teaching home ec. I use it in my Snickerdoodle cookies. I would like to know who was the first person that figured out it could be used in baking and why.
That was seriously interesting. I have always wondered what exactly it is. I use it in snickerdoodles too!
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