Baking Powder's Harvard Pedigree
May 1, 2012 They say that "you are what you eat," so all of us should be chemists by now. Although everything is chemical, we tend to think of food in a different sense, and we're concerned about the other chemicals that are added to food. Aside from specific additive and contaminant scares, such as cyclamates and certain chemical residues, our food supply is rather safe; perhaps safer, if you refrain from fatty and hormone-saturated meat. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) oversees food safety in the United States. They even go as far as to impound Swiss cheese that's augmented by drilling more holes than those produced by natural aging. On the other hand, the simulacrum called "cheese food" is still allowed into our homes and gullets. Nevertheless, the FDA is one of the few federal agencies for which taxpayer dollars are well spent. When I was in high school, we were required to read muckraking author Upton Sinclair's novel, "The Jungle," which included some vivid stories of food adulteration at the turn of the twentieth century. This book helped to launch the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, enforced by the US Department of Agriculture. The Food, Drug, and Insecticide agency was founded in 1927, and it was renamed the Food and Drug Administration in 1930. acid salt in a starch base. The starch is there to prevent too fast a reaction. The reaction is simply given as
NaHCO3 + H+ -> Na+ + CO2 + H2OThe baking powder found in my pantry, as shown in the photograph, is labeled as "Double Acting." Double-acting baking powder is the most common type of baking powder. It contains two acid salts, one of which reacts immediately upon exposure to water, and another that reacts only at the high temperatures found in the baking oven. Cream of tartar (potassium bitartrate, KC4H5O6) and monocalcium phosphate (CaH4P2O8) are the usual low temperature acid salts.[1] The Davis baking powder pictured uses monocalcium phosphate as the low temperature acid salt, and sodium aluminum sulfate as the high temperature acid salt. The inventor of the first useful baking powder was Harvard chemist Eben Norton Horsford, who was the Rumford Professor of the Application of Science to the Useful Arts.[2-3] His professorship was named in honor of the American physicist, Benjamin Thompson, also known as Count Rumford. Thompson is best known for his experiments that demonstrated the mechanical equivalent of heat.
 | Eben Norton Horsford From his dress, we can surmise that the Harvard classrooms were somewhat chilly. Boston had a record low temperature of -12°F (-24.4°C) in 1951. I wasn't able to find temperature data for Horsford's era. (Via Wikimedia Commons). |
