Cream of Tartar Substitute: What Works and When

Updated September 2026 · Baking Resources

There is no single swap, because cream of tartar does three unrelated jobs and each one has a different answer. For stabilizing egg whites, use 2 teaspoons of lemon juice or white vinegar per teaspoon of cream of tartar (or about 1/4 teaspoon per egg white). For leavening, where it's paired with baking soda, replace both with ready-made baking powder. For stopping sugar from crystallizing in candy, icing, and syrup, use corn syrup, and nothing acidic will do it.

Pick the wrong one and you don't get a worse result, you get no result at all. Lemon juice does nothing for candy, and corn syrup does nothing for meringue.

Our free baking substitutions tool gives the ratio for any amount, and it separates the swaps by job the same way this page does.

Updated September 2026

Cream of tartar substitute chart, by job

Ratios are per 1 teaspoon of cream of tartar unless noted.

What cream of tartar actually is

Cream of tartar is potassium bitartrate, a fine white powder scraped from the inside of wine barrels. It's a dry acid, and that's the whole trick: an acid you can measure by the teaspoon and store in a cabinet for years without it going anywhere.

That single property is why it turns up in such different recipes. Anywhere a baker needs acid without liquid, cream of tartar is the answer.

It is not a leavening agent by itself. Put a teaspoon in a batter with no baking soda and nothing rises. It's half of a reaction, and it needs a base. If that distinction is fuzzy, our overview of what is leavening in baking lays out how the acid and base halves work together.

It's also not the same as tartaric acid, cream of tarter (a common misspelling), or tartar sauce.

Job 1: stabilizing egg whites

This is the job most home bakers need it for, and it's the easiest to substitute.

Whipping egg whites unfolds their proteins so they can wrap around air bubbles. Add a little acid and you lower the pH, which makes the proteins unfold more evenly and stops them from bonding too tightly to each other. The practical result is a foam that takes longer to over-whip, holds its volume longer, and weeps less.

The standard dose is 1/8 teaspoon of cream of tartar per egg white, added once the whites are foamy and before you raise the mixer speed.

The swap: 1/4 teaspoon of lemon juice or white vinegar per egg white. That's the same 2:1 ratio as the chart above, just scaled down.

Three practical notes.

The added liquid is real but small. Two teaspoons of lemon juice across eight whites is roughly 10 g of water into about 280 g of egg white. It won't stop the foam forming, but a meringue made this way tends to bead and weep a little sooner in humid weather.

Use plain white vinegar, not cider or wine vinegar, since those carry flavor at this dose. Lemon juice is undetectable in anything sweet.

And acid is not the fix for the most common egg white failure. If your whites refuse to whip, the culprit is almost always fat: a speck of yolk, or a plastic bowl holding an invisible film of grease. Our guide on how to whip egg whites covers the bowl test and the stages.

Job 2: leavening, where it partners with baking soda

Cream of tartar's other famous role is being the acid half of homemade baking powder. The ratio the site uses throughout is 1 part baking soda to 2 parts cream of tartar by volume, which is why 1 teaspoon of baking powder equals 1/4 teaspoon of baking soda plus 1/2 teaspoon of cream of tartar.

So if a recipe calls for both soda and cream of tartar and you're out of the cream of tartar, the cleanest fix is to reverse the math: take out both, and put in baking powder instead.

The direct conversion: every 1/2 teaspoon of cream of tartar plus its 1/4 teaspoon of baking soda comes back out as 1 teaspoon of baking powder.

Our substitutions tool lists this a little more conservatively, at roughly 1 1/2 teaspoons of baking powder per teaspoon of cream of tartar rather than the 2 teaspoons the strict ratio implies. Both are defensible. Store baking powder is double-acting, so it holds part of its gas back for the oven and delivers more usable lift than the same nominal amount of a single-acting homemade mix. Starting at the lower figure and staying under the dose ceiling is the safer habit.

Check the ceiling before you commit. The safe dose is about 1 to 1 1/4 teaspoons of baking powder per cup of flour. Above that you get a metallic edge, then a fast rise followed by a collapse. If your conversion lands over the ceiling, use the lower end of the range and accept slightly less lift.

If you have no baking powder either

Any acid can play cream of tartar's part, but liquid acids force you to rebalance the recipe.

Every one of these is single-acting, meaning all the gas is made in the bowl. Get the batter into a preheated oven within a couple of minutes. The full set of combinations lives in our baking powder substitute chart, and the difference between the two leaveners is covered in baking soda vs baking powder.

If the recipe's cream of tartar and soda together were essentially standing in for baking powder in a biscuit or pancake batter, swapping in self-rising flour is another clean route, as long as you remove the recipe's salt too.

Job 3: stopping sugar from crystallizing

This is the job people miss, and it's the one where the usual substitutes fail completely.

When you boil a sugar syrup, dissolved sucrose wants to find its neighbors and lock back into crystals. One rogue crystal on the side of the pan can seed the whole batch and turn a smooth caramel or frosting grainy.

Acid solves it chemically. It splits some of the sucrose into glucose and fructose, two different molecules that get in the way of a tidy crystal lattice. That's called invert sugar, and cream of tartar is a common way to do it.

The swap: corn syrup, 1 teaspoon per 1 teaspoon of cream of tartar. Corn syrup already is invert sugar, so it interferes with crystallization directly rather than making the syrup do it. Honey, golden syrup, and glucose syrup all work the same way.

Lemon juice can partly do this job at about 1/8 teaspoon per cup of sugar, but the results vary with how long and how hot you cook it. Corn syrup is the reliable answer.

Where this matters: royal icing, Italian and Swiss buttercream, fudge, caramel, boiled frostings, homemade marshmallow, and hard candy. If your buttercream or icing has ever gone gritty, this is usually why.

Worked example: snickerdoodles with no cream of tartar

Snickerdoodles are the recipe that sends people looking for a substitute, so here's the honest math on the classic proportions.

A typical snickerdoodle dough: 2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour, 2 teaspoons cream of tartar, 1 teaspoon baking soda.

Step 1, work out what it's doing. The 2 teaspoons of cream of tartar and 1 teaspoon of soda are exactly the 2:1 homemade baking powder ratio. So the leavening in a snickerdoodle is 3 teaspoons of single-acting baking powder, made in the bowl.

Step 2, convert. The strict ratio says 1 teaspoon of soda plus 2 teaspoons of cream of tartar comes back out as 4 teaspoons of baking powder. That sounds like a lot, so check it against the ceiling.

Step 3, check the ceiling. 2 3/4 cups of flour at the safe maximum of 1 1/4 teaspoons of baking powder per cup allows about 3 1/2 teaspoons. Four teaspoons is over the line and would taste metallic.

Step 4, land on the number. Use 2 to 2 1/2 teaspoons of baking powder and nothing else. That's comfortably inside the ceiling, and because store baking powder is double-acting, it holds gas back for the oven, which more than makes up for the lower nominal amount. The cookies spread and puff the same way.

What you lose: the tang. Cream of tartar leaves a faint sourness that is genuinely part of what a snickerdoodle tastes like, and baking powder's acids are flavor-neutral. You also lose a little of the chew, because the acid slightly tenderizes the crumb.

Closest recovery: add 1/2 teaspoon of lemon juice to the wet ingredients. It's not identical, but it puts a hint of the sourness back without changing the leavening you just balanced.

The cookies come out slightly cakier and a little less tangy. Nobody who didn't bake them will notice, and the alternative is not making them.

When there's no substitute worth making

Angel food cake. The cream of tartar in an angel food is doing double duty: stabilizing an enormous egg white foam and keeping the crumb white by lowering the pH. Lemon juice covers the first job, but it adds liquid to a batter that has very little slack, and the crumb goes a shade more yellow. It's a bake worth buying the jar for.

Hard candy and pulled sugar. Corn syrup covers this, but the substitution changes the finished texture. It's not a failure, just a different candy.

Anything already balanced on the edge. In a recipe that specifies cream of tartar in a fraction as small as 1/8 teaspoon, the honest answer is that leaving it out entirely is usually less disruptive than a poorly matched swap.

Cream of tartar keeps essentially forever in a sealed jar in a cool cupboard. A single small container will outlast most of the recipes you'll use it in, which makes it one of the few pantry items genuinely worth having on hand rather than substituting.

Frequently asked questions

What can I use instead of cream of tartar?

It depends on the job. For stabilizing egg whites, 2 teaspoons of lemon juice or white vinegar per teaspoon of cream of tartar. For leavening alongside baking soda, take both out and use baking powder instead, starting at about 1 1/2 teaspoons per teaspoon of cream of tartar. For keeping candy and icing smooth, corn syrup at 1 teaspoon per teaspoon.

Can I just leave cream of tartar out?

Sometimes. In a meringue you'll get a foam that's fussier and quicker to weep, but it will still whip. In a recipe where cream of tartar is the acid for baking soda, leaving it out means the soda has nothing to react with, so you get a flat bake with a soapy taste. Check what job it's doing before you skip it.

Is baking powder the same as cream of tartar?

No. Baking powder contains cream of tartar or a similar acid, plus baking soda and cornstarch. Cream of tartar on its own is only the acid half, so it can't raise anything by itself. One teaspoon of baking powder is roughly 1/4 teaspoon of baking soda plus 1/2 teaspoon of cream of tartar.

How much lemon juice replaces cream of tartar in egg whites?

Use 1/4 teaspoon of lemon juice per egg white, which matches the standard 1/8 teaspoon of cream of tartar per white. Add it once the whites are foamy, before you raise the mixer speed. White vinegar works identically at the same amount.

Can I make snickerdoodles without cream of tartar?

Yes. Replace the 2 teaspoons of cream of tartar and 1 teaspoon of baking soda in a standard dough with 2 to 2 1/2 teaspoons of baking powder. The cookies rise and spread the same way but lose the faint tang, which you can partly restore with 1/2 teaspoon of lemon juice in the wet ingredients.

Does cream of tartar expire?

Practically speaking, no. It's a stable dry acid with no moisture in it, and a sealed jar in a cool cupboard stays usable for many years past its printed date. Clumping means moisture got in, not that it's dead. This is the opposite of baking powder, which fades in about six months after opening.

Can I use cream of tartar instead of buttermilk?

Yes, for the acid it supplies. Whisk 1 3/4 teaspoons of cream of tartar into 1 cup of milk to make a buttermilk stand-in that carries no vinegar note. Add it to a small splash of the milk first or it clumps. Our buttermilk substitute guide covers the other options.

What does cream of tartar do in frosting?

It stops the sugar from recrystallizing, which keeps a boiled frosting or royal icing smooth and glossy instead of grainy. That's a completely different job from the one it does in egg whites, and it's the reason corn syrup rather than lemon juice is the substitute here.

Related guides: Baking powder substitute | Baking soda vs baking powder | What is leavening in baking | How to make self rising flour | How to whip egg whites | Baking substitutions tool