Right: Cooking ingredients from Deborah’s Pantry; I love the packaging.
I’ve recently become interested in the chemistry of cooking and how it has changed over time. Â How did we gel things before gelatin? Â How did cakes rise before baking powder?
With this idea in mind, I ordered a bundle of 18th century ingredients from Deborah’s Pantry: Pearlash, the first form of chemical leavening for baked goods; gum arabic, a hardening agent used in confectionery; and isinglass, a jellying agent extracted from the swim bladders of sturgeon.  Stay tuned as I attempt to turn these items into food…
I have tried gum tragacanth.. it is also a resin and it works a little like gelatin…the recipe I tried didn’t mention soaking it first, so I didn’t. It left little tapioca like balls in the finished unsolid final product!!
I’m dying to hear about working with issinglass… can’t wait to hear your exploits! I’ve never heard of pearlash.
I had the tapioca-ball problem in my second isinglass attempt…more on that soon.
i love how old timey they are even packaged!! can’t wait to see what you do with them!
oops, that was me! :)