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Dessert

Best Baking Powder

A homemade baking powder made from tartaric acid, bicarbonate of soda, and dry baked flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Best Baking Powder

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Ensure all ingredients are dry and finely pulverized separately in a clean porcelain mortar.

  2. Sift all ingredients together repeatedly until perfectly mixed.

Store and use

  1. Store in well-corked bottles.

  2. Use 2 teaspoons of this baking powder for each pint of flour.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

What each ingredient does

Tartaric acid
Acts as the acid that reacts with the soda to release carbon dioxide for rising.
Bicarbonate of soda
Supplies the alkali that reacts with the acid to produce carbon dioxide gas for rising.
Dry baked flour
Keeps the acid and soda separated and dry so they react only once mixed into dough.

The step that matters

Sift until perfectly mixed. If the acid and soda are unevenly distributed, some spots will rise too much and others too little, so the mixture must be thoroughly blended and kept dry.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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