“Yes please!” I said when a friend asked if I’d like a fresh, daily supply of yoghurt. She took a jar covered in cheesecloth out of her kitchen cupboard, and dipped a fork into the contents: creamy, thick yoghurt. She fished around with the fork and lifted out a cauliflowerish lump: kefir.   “All it takes is a piece of [...]

When you hungrily and hopefully watch a cake rise through the window of the oven, it’s doing so because of carbon dioxide bubbles. This gas is released from a reaction between an acid and an alkali in the baking powder you added to the recipe. Baking powder consists of an acid component, such as cream of tartar (a white, acidic [...]

Without a carbohydrate called pectin, jam would just be sweet fruit juice and jelly beans would be colourful piles of sugary powder. Pectin is found in the cell walls of all plants, and is present in higher levels in certain fruit, such as apples and citrus fruits, with most pectin located under the peel. It is broken down as fruit [...]