Bottom of the barrel

I'm not obsessed with baking powder, I'm really not. It's just that, in my every day cooking, the only thing I actually use recipes for is baking, otherwise cookbooks and recipes merely serve to inspire and obsess over my favorite addiction: food.  Baking however, is a more precise art, probably having more in common with chemistry than anything else. That means paying attention to an actual recipe. So in reading old cookbooks, I run into discussions of baking powder a lot. Of course, it helps that many of them are actually produced by the food companies as a way of promoting their product, like Royal, as in Royal Baking Powder.

This one is from 1930, click on the following picture and get a larger version so you can read the origin of cream of tartar.

Sometimes I ask myself, who decided to try that for the first time? Who said, "Hey, this cheese is completely overrun with some kind of green mold, I think I'll try some! Wow, it didn't kill me and it tastes great!" Who said, "Hey, that cat just pooped out a bunch of undigested coffee beans, I think I'll grind them up and drink 'em!" (If you think I'm kidding, look up Kopi Luwak coffee.) Who said, "What's this white crusty scum in our wine barrel? Let's throw some in our bread to see what happens." I mean, I don't get out of the shower and look at the soap film left behind and wonder if it's edible. Maybe I should, maybe it is. Truly, who discovered cream of tartar?

In case you want to know what the experts say, I won't leave you in suspense, here's the next page:

So if you also have a 'particular household', like myself, though I suspect many would say 'peculiar' instead, get yourself some cream of tartar baking soda. It's better than eating aluminum.