Cream of Tartar

Now that I'm done with college, I'm educating myself by eating and drinking. While wine tasting this past weekend, a wine maker informed me that the tiny crystallized bits clinging to the wine cork were cream of tartar. He asked me if I had ever used cream of tartar, and I said I did, though I could only conjure up snickerdoodles in my head. Does anything else use cream of tartar? Didn't matter; there had been many tastes of wine and now this: an unexpected education. A school lesson hidden by alcohol!

And though the man seemed authoritative, and the tiny crust that had formed on the grape-stained end of the cork, I was slightly doubtful. Surely this man had never made snickerdoodles.

Here it is: Cream of tartar is is the common name for potassium hydrogen tartrate, or Potassium bitartrate. It is officially an acid. It results when tartaric acid is half neutralized with potassium hydroxide. Apparently only grapes have a useful amount of tartaric acid, and cream of tartar comes, indeed, from the process of making wine. But how does it transform from those little dark purple crystals into the white powdery stuff that goes into snickerdoodles? (For those who are truly unfortunate and have never had or heard of a snickerdoodle, I implore you to save yourself by making some immediately! I can't publish my mother's recipe, but here's a similar one for Grandma's Snickerdoodles.

The crystals on the cork are also called "beeswing," which the kind man at Retzlaff did not tell me about! They go through a purification process to become white and powdery.

The second mystery: why is it called cream of tartar? Obviously the tartar part is from the tartaric acid. But cream? It's powder. This will have to remain a mystery, as I searched and searched and learned nothing. It does enhance the creamy texture of frosting and other baked goods, though, so that could be the reason.


Other uses: to help stiffen egg whites, as in meringues. It also helps polish copper and brass cookware. Other fun facts: baking powder is 2 parts cream of tartar, one part cornstarch, and one part baking soda. Cream of tartar is also a leavening agent on its own, though pricier than baking powder. It is not an ingredient in, nor should it be confused with, tartar sauce. Lastly, it might be a cure for acne, though there seems to be some controversy on that note.