This Common Baking Ingredient Is Actually a Byproduct of the Winemaking Process

This article is part of our Cocktail Chatter series, where we dive into the wild, weird, and wondrous corners of history to share over a cocktail and impress your friends.

Enjoying a glass of wine with dessert might be one of the best ways to wrap up a meal. Big-bodied reds like Malbec pair nicely with chocolate mousse, a crisp glass of Riesling goes great with a lemon meringue pie, and around the holidays, nothing tastes better with snickerdoodles than a few sips of Madeira. But beyond simply tasting great with wine, these desserts might actually make for the ideal wine pairing as one ingredient crucial for perfecting them actually comes from the winemaking process.

When grapes ferment, they produce several types of acid, two of which are crucial for providing a wine with its taste, balance, and mouthfeel: malic acid and tartaric acid. The former is easily converted to lactic acid in a process known as malolactic fermentation that the majority of red wines and some white wines undergo. And tartaric acid is responsible for much of the acidity that zings across our palates when we drink wine. But while tartaric acid is a critical component of winemaking, fermenting grapes produce a lot of it, and not all of it is necessary.

As tartaric acid forms, it often binds with potassium, another big element in wine, to form a white sediment called potassium bitartrate that gathers on the sides of winemaking vessels. It’s the very same compound that can leave crystals — or wine diamonds — beneath the cork of your bottle. But when this compound is removed from the fermentation vats and crushed into a powder, it creates what is commercially known and sold as cream of tartar.

Cream of tartar — or potassium bitartrate as it’s scientifically known — is an important stabilizing agent, and almost every recipe incorporating whipped egg whites calls for it. That means everything from meringues and pavlovas to mousse and angel’s food cake will typically require a bit of the powder. Not only will the ingredient speed up the lengthy and labor intensive whipping process, but it also ensures egg whites remain bouncy and glossy.

Beyond stabilizing egg whites and whipped cream, a hit of cream of tartar is also helpful in making the quintessential snickerdoodle cookie. See, cream of tartar also prevents sugar from crystallizing by forcing sucrose to break into fructose and glucose. In layman’s terms, cream of tartar keeps snickerdoodles chewy even after they’re baked. Plus, it provides the cookie with its signature tangy flavor.

So the next time you enjoy a fluffy slice of angel food cake or a crispy pavlova, remember to thank the winemaking process for its very helpful byproduct that makes these treats so good.

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