Ascorbic Acid

Ascorbic Acid is a chemist's name for plain, old-fashioned Vitamin C.

In cooking, aside from its obvious nutritional advantages, it is used for a very common purpose: to stop cut fruits and vegetables from browning. When you rub pieces of apple or a cut artichoke with a lemon, it is the Asorbic Acid which is doing the work of stopping the cut surface from turning unsightly.

Technically, there are actually two forms of Ascorbic Acid: L-ascorbic acid and L-dehydroascorbic acid. L-ascorbic acid becomes L-dehydroascorbic acid when it reacts with oxygen in the air. We were all taught that boiling vegetables or fruit destroys the Vitamin C in them. That's a very simplistic answer, though. Heat can destroy Vitamin C, and overly prolonged boiling will destroy a good deal of it. However, what happens first is that a good deal of the Vitamin C leeches off into the water. That's not a problem if you are going to be using the water to make a syrup, stock or soup with it. Take Rose Hips as an example, after 80 minutes of boiling, about 85% of the Vitamin C that passed into the water will remain in the water -- only about 15% is lost. Thus, a great deal of the Vitamin C will remain available to the body if the cooking liquid is used. That's why Rose Hip syrup (the sweetened, thickened water that Rose Hips were boiled in) was so important nutritionally in Britain in the Second World War.

The assumption is that most people don't use their cooking water is probably correct. Most people strain their vegetables in the sink and let the nutrient-rich water flow down the drain. If you freeze your cooking water for later use in stocks and soups, you need to worry far, far less about this.Our bodies use Ascorbic Acid to make collagen.

Freezing does not impact Vitamin C much, but canning does. In the canning process, some of the Vitamin C leaves the fruit or vegetable and passes into the canning liquid. The prolonged processing periods usually necessary for canning then destroys the Vitamin C. The little Vitamin C left in the canning fluid is often drained away when the food item is used.

Also called:

Acidulate

EU Designations, Kosher, Measurements, Organic Food, Pasteurization