Tartaric acid

Acide tartrique

What it is

Scheele isolated it in 1769 from the crust that settles inside a wine cask, and in 1848 Louis Pasteur sorted its two mirror-image crystals apart by hand under a lens. No other kitchen acid started a whole branch of chemistry.

In the kitchen

A pinch - 0.5 g per kilo of sugar - added at 114 C inverts just enough of a syrup to stop it graining, and no more. Heavier and it will never set at all; it is the harshest of the fruit acids on the palate, so keep it where grape or wine already belongs.

Goes with

Grape Grape must Raisin White sugar Glucose syrup Cream of tartar Lemon

Same species

Ascorbic acid Lactic acid Malic acid

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