I was in a restaurant last Sunday and was given one of those two-fer packets, with salt in one side and pepper in the other.
Both sides listed ingredients. The Pepper side contained “Pepper” (Not even “ground black pepper”. You’d think they’d jazz it up a little).
The Salt side contained Salt, Potassium Iodide, and Yellow Prussiate of Potash.
Really. It reads as if Joseph Priestly wrote their label. Who uses terminology like that today, especially right after “Potassium Iodide”?
I understand the Salt part (although why not “sodium chloride”, to keep up the chemical standard?) And the Potassium Iodide is clearly there because it’s an added nutrient – they’re giving you iodized salt.
I know they also sometimes add something to keep salt from sticking together, especially in humid weather. But why call it by such an archaic name?
It turns out that Yellow Prussiate of Potash is actually Potassium Ferrocyanide, a chemical I fondly recall from my old Chemistry kits. standard experiment was mixing Potassium or Sodium Ferrocyanide with Ferric Ammonium Sulfate to precipitate Prussian Blue. There were other color-changing reactions, too.
Potassium Ferrocyanide is indeed an anti-caking agent, so it was certainly added for that reason. I figure that the ancient chemical name was used because if they called it “Potassium Ferrocyanide”, too many people would look at it and say “There’s CYANIDE in my salt???!!”
But apparently not enough people remember Prussic Acid to be freaked out by Yellow Prussiate of Potash.
Weird sidelight – it turns out that I’ve been looking for Potassium Ferrocyanide for a mixture i want to make up at work. For some reason, there’s a problem getting this stuff – I still haven’t got the bottle I ordered through our company’s purchasing system. But, heck, this is a pretty safe and standard chemical, I figured, so I ordered some through Amazon.
well, it still took a long time, but I finally got it. It came in a package that originated in Russia, and it had my wife trying to figure out what I’d bought from there, festooned with Russian stamps.
Does anybody know why you apparently can’t get Potassium Ferrocyanide from American suppliers, and it takes a long time to come in from Russia? I still haven’t got the stuff i ordered at work. Apparently salt packagers have no problem getting it. Maybe I should have ordered Yellow Prussiate of Potash instead.
