Xanthan gum

Gomme xanthane

What it is

It was found in the late 1950s at a United States Department of Agriculture laboratory in Peoria, Illinois, by a team under Allene Jeanes screening bacteria for useful polysaccharides. The producer, Xanthomonas campestris, is a plant disease that rots cabbages; the slime it secretes to glue itself to a leaf is what now holds a vinaigrette together.

In the kitchen

Weigh it, never spoon it: 0.2% of the liquid's weight gives a sauce that still pours, 0.5% one that mounds, and the gap between them is a few tenths of a gram. Add it with the blender already running, or it clumps into fish eyes that never dissolve.

Goes with

Olive oil Lemon Mustard Balsamic vinegar Tomato Cream

Also used with

Iota carrageenan Low-acyl gellan gum

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