![]() Made from lye and wood ashes, or baker's ammonia, pearlash consisted mainly of potassium carbonate, which also produces carbon dioxide quickly and reliably. In addition to beating air into their eggs, they often used a kitchen staple called pearlash, or potash, which shows up in the first American cookbook, American Cookery, in 1796. In the 18th century, American bakers were already experimenting with less labor-intensive ways to make things rise. But how did this revolution-in-a-can come about? “It's the one ingredient everyone has on their shelf." This cheap chemical factors into countless baked goods we buy and make every day, from donuts to hamburger buns. ![]() Today, baking powder "is like air, water,” Civitello says. Without this miraculous white substance, "We literally would not have cake as we know it now," says Linda Civitello, a food historian and author of the new book Baking Powder Wars. So what changed? In a phrase, baking powder. Basically, forget about the joy of waking up and deciding to make pancakes. "You're talking upwards of 12 hours of rising, usually more like 24 hours," says Jessica Carbone, a scholar in the National Museum of American History's Food History Project. ![]() (Many early recipes recommend obtaining the help of a manservant.)Įven when it did work, leavening was a tedious process. Once you’d done that, your hard-earned rising agent could still be killed or weakened by temperatures that were too hot or too cold, or contamination from bacteria. First you had to make the yeast, by letting fruit or vegetables or grains ferment. And we aren’t talking about dry or refrigerated yeast this was way before fridges and commercial packaging. In the 18th century and earlier, most baking was dictated by the delicate whims of respiring yeast. Mix them into dough and they’ll eventually fill it with the familiar bubbles of carbon dioxide that make baked goods rise-a process known as leavening. As these finicky little fungi grow and divide, they breathe in oxygen and release carbon dioxide like we do. For most of human history, the main rising agent has been yeast. If you wanted your cake to be fluffy and airy, rather than dense and flat, you would need to do some serious work make it rise. "The flour should be dried before the fire, sifted and weighed currants washed and dried raisins stoned sugar pounded, and rolled fine and sifted and all spices, after being well dried at the fire, pounded and sifted," reads a common cake recipe in the 1841 cookbook Early American Cookery.īesides this grueling work, you had to plan ahead. In early America, making a cake was an ordeal. Today, if you need to make a last-minute birthday cake, you can grab a box of Betty Crocker cake mix, whisk it with some oil and eggs, and pop it in the oven.
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