What Is a Cherry Phosphate?

Cherry Phosphate!? Having consumed a lot of sodas, I came across cherry phosphate and I wanted to know what it was.

So, I did some research, and here’s what I found.

Cherry phosphate drink is tricky to make, so I’ll break down what the ingredients are, whether sodas have phosphate, what drinks contain phosphate, and where you can buy cherry phosphate.

Fasten your seatbelt as we dive deep into the world of cherry phosphate.

Cherry Phosphate Recipe And Ingredients

Cherry syrup can be made in a range of ways, but the most common is to boil down cherry juice and sugar to make it concentrated.

What is phosphate?

What exactly is phosphate? I’d heard about it in chemistry class.

Phosphorous is an element on the periodic table much like sodium (Na), and Chlorine (Cl).

It has the chemical symbol ‘P’.

Acid Phosphate is a lot of phosphorous chemicals that have bonded together and occur naturally in rocks as what are called minerals.

Phosphorus in rock form is a very soft mineral and breaks apart very easily compared to other naturally occurring minerals.

Phosphorus is mined from rocks that contain it because it’s used in agriculture – you might have heard gardeners talk about it, and it’s also used for industrial and household products such as dishwashing powder, and paints that are used to stop things from rusting, according to the Royal Society of Chemistry.

What’s used in soda is phosphoric acid which is a weak acid that’s made from phosphate.

According to Healthline, it’s used in sodas to give them a tangy flavor it’s a delicious beverage, and it also stops mold and bacteria growing from growing in soda.

Because phosphoric acid is slightly acidic it makes the soda a bad environment for mold and bacteria to grow.

Coca-Cola also says that they add it to their sodas to improve the taste.

It’s also present in foods in a range of forms.

Here’s a table that shows some foods that contain phosphates, and how it occurs:

Data provided by Chem.libretexts.org.

The phosphates are the parts of the chemical formula that have ‘PO’.

And the small number next to the P and O are the different numbers of phosphorus and oxygen molecules.

Phosphate used in food has a range of uses.

For example, to make it thicker, to prevent processed eggs from changing color, and to prevent drinks from going cloudy – so they look better, and to keep food the same color.

As you may be aware, some foods change color when they’re exposed to the air.

 

The first method where it’s dissolved in acid is used to create phosphoric acid for industrial purposes, whereas the second method is used to make food-grade phosphoric acid used in sodas, and other food and drinks.

Although phosphoric acid is added to sodas to improve the taste, it also preserves the soda by stopping mold and bacteria from growing.

Sodas or cherry soda also contain a small amount of carbonic acid, which gets produced when the soda is carbonated.

Sodas are carbonated using CO₂ gas.

When the CO₂ gas interacts with water it makes H₂CO₃ which is carbonic acid.

Like phosphoric acid, it makes the soda a bit more bitter. It’s also the reason why soda water is bitter.

As you may be aware, most soda waters are made of only two ingredients: water, and the CO₂ gas that’s pumped into it to make it fizzy.

I wrote about this in more detail in this article why is soda water bitter?

There’s also a type of soda called blue cream soda.

It’s made by a range of brands such as Frosties.

It’s simply a vanilla phosphate/cream soda that has blue coloring added to it.

The doctors at Healthline also say that the following foods are high in phosphorus:

• Chicken and turkey
• Pork
• Dairy
• Seeds
• Nuts

Phosphorus naturally occurs in rocks and is released through rain and river erosion.

Where it makes its way into the soil, and eventually into plants where it’s eaten by animals.

According to Wikipedia the largest deposit of phosphorus bearing rocks is found in Morocco in Africa.

Here’s a summary of the main points I covered in this article:

Cherry phosphate is an old name for cherry soda that was used in the late 1800s.

The name comes from phosphoric acid which is used in sodas to add a tangy flavor.

It also preserves the soda by making an inhospitable environment for bacteria and mold.

Phosphates are also added to food for various purposes such as preserving the color of eggs and stopping drinks from going cloudy.

Phosphorous is a chemical element with the symbol P, and phosphate is a molecule that results from the combination of phosphate with oxygen.

Phosphoric acid is created by separating it from phosphorous-bearing rocks using either a strong acid or by heating up really hot.