Sodium bicarbonate

Bicarbonate de sodium

What it is

Before it was cheap, cakes were raised with pearlash, a potash leached from wood ashes that Amelia Simmons put into print in 1796; the Solvay process made bicarbonate cheaper than ash by the 1860s. Used without an acid it does not leaven at all, it alkalises - and that is where most of its kitchen work lies.

In the kitchen

A quarter-teaspoon per 500 g of sliced onions more than halves the time to deep caramel, because Maillard runs faster at high pH; they will slump and go slippery, so drive the water off afterwards. The same pinch in chickpea soaking water dissolves the skins - past that, everything tastes of soap.

Goes with

Chickpeas Dried broad bean Onion Buttermilk Natural cocoa powder Honey Kansui T55 flour

Same species

Alaea red Hawaiian salt Fleur de sel de Guérande Himalayan pink salt Kala namak (Indian black salt) Kansui Kosher salt

Also used with

Golden syrup Warabi (bracken shoot) Cream of tartar

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