Tartar Place

So Cream of Tartar and Tartaric Acid are 2 different things? – Found out the hard way

Yes, no, an answer my award-winning brother would be proud of. Tartaric Acid is an acid that gives foods a notable sour taste. Tartaric Acid, C4 H6 O6, for those who keep score at home, is found naturally in grapes, bananas and for most commercial/industrial purposes the tamarind. Its properties have been known about since 800 AD, and over the last 1200ish years, tartaric acid has been used as an antioxidant, preservative, an emulsifier, as a coagulate in cheese making, a mild laxative and on the other end, an emetic. 

Tartaric Acid is also the central ingredient in Cream of Tartar, which due the presence of salt - or both more vaguely and precisely – salts, forms a different chemical. Instead of whisking table salt - sodium chloride and tartaric acid together, the compound is Potassium Hydrogen Tartrate (KC4 H5 O6), also known as potassium bitartrate, still better known as Cream of tartar. This compound is an acid salt, and it is the acidic nature of Cream of Tartar that causes confusion, it is both rare and rarely called on to need something be both salty and have the ability to lower a foods pH. This ability is especially important in whipping egg whites  - a lower pH helps coagulate and stabilize the proteins. In the most basic form of baking powder, cream of tartar is the mild acid that is combined with a mild alkali (bicarbonate of soda), the two react together producing carbon dioxide, which even at microscopic levels used to leaven chocolate chip cookies, makes Al Gore weep.

Here the tartar has nothing to do with steak tartare or the mayonnaise based sauce and by extension the famous horseback riders of the east. Tartar comes to us from Arabic via Latin from the word durd meaning dregs, the white sediment left behind in wine barrels, which is where early chemists, alchemists and apothecaries found tartaric acid. 

Because tartaric acid could among other things, poison people and mice, it requites more than a trip to the grocery store…usually an internet connection and a valid credit card, not a high barrier, but just enough, to prevent malfeasance . I use tartaric acid to make mascarpone cheese and nothing else. Because of the presence of salt and the lower pH, cream of tartar can’t be substituted in cheese making. Not as subtle and tasty as mascarpone but cream of tartar is an essential ingredient in play-doh and the slightly more edible gingerbread icing.