Chemistry

Grapefruit And Salt: The Science Behind This Unlikely Power Couple

NADIA BERENSTEIN

Grapefruit’s bitterness can make it hard to love. Indeed, people often smother it in sugar just to get it down. And yet Americans were once urged to sweeten it with salt.

Ad campaigns from the first and second world wars tried to convince us that“Grapefruit Tastes Sweeter With Salt!” as one 1946 ad for Morton’s in Life magazine put it. The pairing, these ads swore, enhanced the flavor. Continue reading →

A competitor prepares coffee during the El Salvador National Barista Championship at a mall in San Salvador

STR New / Reuters

From the Atlantic, where some of (but not all) our favorite coffee stories have come from in the past, we have this new item to share:

Specialty Coffee’s Resident Scientist

A computational chemist is changing the way coffee makers think about water.

by Sarah Kollmorgen

Wherever he goes, Christopher H. Hendon brings a homemade supply of powdery white chemicals. Made from coral-reef care sets, the little bottles and plastic bags may raise some TSA eyebrows, but they serve a perfectly innocent purpose. The substances comprise his personal water filtration titration kit.

“Who travels with this much white powder?” Hendon says with a laugh. His duffel currently contains several compounds including calcium chloride, magnesium sulfate, and potassium bicarbonate. These mixtures help detect the invisible chemicals present in a glass of water, he explains. Using them, Hendon can determine how hard the water is in any geographical area, based on the minerals it contains. Continue reading →