Cream of Tartar

My next post will be all about Angel Food Cake, I've been bakin' up a storm this week.  I'm guessing you thought I was going to give up on my experiment but really I did double duty this week so stay tuned!

But in buying ingredients for the Angel Food I needed to find Cream of Tartar.  I didn't really thing much of it, I've never used the ingredient before but I just thought it was a spice of some sort.  And then when I got it home I realized that I was using it as an egg white stabilizer, but what WAS it?

I've since learned that it is potassium hydrogen tartrate, an acid salt.  Cream of Tartar is actually formed from the sediment left over in wine barrels. Every time I pull out a cake pan and put on my apron I realize I'm in for a chemistry lesson.