Tartaric Acid substitute

Best substitute

Citric acid

Use 1 ¼ tsp citric acid for every 1 tsp tartaric acid

Best for Turkish delight

Different taste

Use citric acid at about 1 1/4 teaspoons for every 1 teaspoon of tartaric acid, or 3 tablespoons of lemon juice per teaspoon if the recipe has room for extra liquid. Cream of tartar is not the same thing and you need roughly twice as much, with much milder sourness.

Other tartaric acid substitutes

Ranked, with the exact amount to use

2Cream of tartar
Taste and texture differ
Use 2 tsp cream of tartar for every 1 tsp tartaric acid
The potassium salt of tartaric acid, which is related but is a much weaker acid.
What changes
Best for
stabilising egg whites, stopping sugar syrups crystallising, biscuits and scones, royal icing
Worth being clear about, because this is the single most common mix-up: cream of tartar is potassium bitartrate, a salt made from tartaric acid, not the acid itself. It is roughly a third to a half as acidic spoon for spoon, and it barely tastes sour, more chalky and faintly mineral. That means it is a perfectly good swap where you only need an acid to do a job quietly, such as keeping a sugar syrup smooth or helping meringue hold, and a poor one where the sourness is the point. Sherbet powder made with cream of tartar tastes flat and slightly powdery rather than sharp.
3Malic acid
Different taste
Use 1 ¼ tsp malic acid for every 1 tsp tartaric acid
The acid of green apples, sold as a powder in the same candy-making suppliers.
What changes
Best for
sour candy, sour powders, fruit sweets, seasoning blends
Malic acid is slightly less sour than tartaric spoon for spoon, so use a touch more. The character is noticeably different in a way you will taste immediately in a sweet: tartaric hits hard and disappears, while malic builds more slowly and then hangs around for ages, with a green-apple edge behind it. That lingering quality is exactly why extreme sour candy uses malic. If you are making Turkish delight it does the anti-crystallisation job just as well and nobody will notice.
4Lemon juice
Taste and texture differ
Use 3 tbsp lemon juice for every 1 tsp tartaric acid
Fresh acid you almost certainly already have, at the cost of adding liquid.
What changes
Best for
sugar syrups, Turkish delight, drinks and sharbats, jams and fruit curds
Three tablespoons is about 45 ml of extra liquid, which is fine in a sugar syrup you are going to boil anyway and hopeless in a dry mix. The flavour goes obviously lemon, which is welcome in a drink and slightly odd in a rose or pistachio Turkish delight. If you are boiling a syrup you can add the lemon juice early and simply cook it a minute or two longer to drive off the water.
5White vinegar
Taste and texture differ
Use 1 tbsp white vinegar for every 1 tsp tartaric acid
A strong, neutral-tasting liquid acid for savoury and boiled applications.
What changes
Best for
savoury sauces, boiled sugar syrups, brines for immediate use
Vinegar lowers pH efficiently, but it smells like vinegar and that smell survives in anything you do not cook for a while. In a boiled candy syrup the sharp aroma mostly cooks off and you are left with a clean sourness that is perfectly acceptable. In a sherbet or a cold drink it is unpleasant. Treat this as the option you reach for when you need acidity and not flavour.
6Ascorbic acid, vitamin C powder
Different taste
Use 1 tsp ascorbic acid, for pH only for every 1 tsp tartaric acid
The least-bad option when you only need something acidic and have nothing else.
What changes
Best for
stopping cut fruit browning, dough conditioning, mild pH adjustment
Be honest with yourself about what you need. Ascorbic acid lowers pH but tastes only faintly sour and slightly bitter, so a sherbet or a sour sweet made with it tastes strangely blank. It is genuinely useful for keeping apples and pears from browning and as a dough improver, and it is a poor stand-in anywhere the sourness is meant to be tasted.

What is Tartaric Acid?

Tartaric Acid is a fine white crystalline food acid that occurs naturally in grapes, used in very small amounts to add clean sourness, to lower the pH of a batter or filling, and to stop sugar syrups and candy from turning grainy.

Cooking tips

Weigh acids rather than measuring them by spoon when you can. Citric, malic and tartaric acid come in very different crystal sizes, so a level teaspoon of one can hold noticeably more acid than a level teaspoon of another, and in candy that difference is tasteable.
Dissolve the acid in a teaspoon or two of warm water before it goes into a hot sugar syrup. Dropped in dry it tends to sit as grit on the bottom of the pan and you get pockets of fierce sourness in the finished Turkish delight.
Add the acid at the point in the recipe where it says to, not earlier. Acid in a hot sugar syrup inverts sugar, and the longer it cooks the more inverting happens, which gives a softer, stickier set. Turkish delight added early goes slack; hard candy added early stays tacky.
For sherbet powder, keep everything bone dry. Tartaric acid draws moisture from the air, and once it is damp it starts reacting with the bicarbonate in the jar so the mix goes flat before you eat it. Mix on a dry day and store airtight with the lid tight.
Never change the acid in a tested canning, pickling or fermenting recipe. The acidity in those recipes is a safety control against botulism, not a flavour choice, and swapping tartaric acid for something else changes the pH. Follow the recipe as written or use guidance from the National Center for Home Food Preservation.
Look for it in Middle Eastern, Greek and Indian grocers, in homebrew and winemaking shops, and in cake decorating suppliers. It is often labelled wine acid or simply tartaric, and the winemaking version is the same food-grade powder as the baking one.

Frequently asked questions

Is cream of tartar the same as tartaric acid?

No, and this is the mix-up that sends most people to this page. Cream of tartar is potassium bitartrate, a salt made from tartaric acid, and it is a much weaker acid with almost no sour taste. Use roughly twice as much cream of tartar to get the same acidity, and accept that anything meant to taste sharp will taste mild. They are interchangeable for quiet jobs like stabilising egg whites or keeping a syrup smooth, and not interchangeable in sherbet, sour sweets or wine.

Can I just leave it out?

It depends what it is doing. In a drink or a sharbat it is only flavour, so leaving it out gives you something sweeter and flabbier that is still perfectly drinkable. In Turkish delight, nougat or hard candy it is doing chemistry, and leaving it out often means a grainy, crystallised set instead of a clear, tender one, so use another acid rather than nothing. In a canning or fermenting recipe do not leave it out or replace it at all.

Can I use tartaric acid instead of citric acid?

Yes, and you need a little less. Use about 3/4 teaspoon of tartaric acid where a recipe asks for 1 teaspoon of citric acid. The sourness will read cleaner and more wine-like and slightly less lemony, which most people either do not notice or prefer.

How much tartaric acid do I use in sherbet powder?

A common home ratio is roughly equal weights of acid and bicarbonate of soda blended into two to four times that weight of icing sugar, then adjusted to taste. Start with less acid than you think you want, taste a pinch, and build up, because the fizz is driven by the acid and bicarbonate meeting your saliva and it is easy to make something that stings.

Is tartaric acid vegetarian?

The tartaric acid sold for food and winemaking is derived from grape material, a by-product of the wine industry, so it is plant-derived. Some people who avoid anything connected to wine production choose to avoid it for that reason, so read the label if that matters to you.

Related substitutes

More acids substitutes

Tartaric Acid substitute

Other tartaric acid substitutes

2Cream of tartar

3Malic acid

4Lemon juice

5White vinegar

6Ascorbic acid, vitamin C powder