ACIDS are invaluable mainstay cooking ingredients. Lemon and lime juices, myriad vinegars and sour salt, or citric acid, can brighten and balance the flavor of almost any food. But what about their chemical opposites, the un-acids? These are the alkalis, and they’re a different story.

The only alkali that most cooks have ever used is baking soda. And about all we do with it is pair it with a neutralizing acid to make carbon dioxide bubbles that leaven pancakes or baked goods. We never use it as a flavoring. It’s a mineral, like most alkalis, and it tastes bitter and soapy.

In fact there are a number of equally distasteful alkalis that still manage to create distinctively tasty foods, and they’re becoming easier to find. Even lye, an alkali strong enough to double as a drain cleaner, is now sold online and in specialty shops in food-grade form for making pretzels.

You may draw the line at cooking with a corrosive ingredient best handled with gloves. On the other hand, baking soda is too mild to produce the particular flavors and textures that lye can. But thanks to the simplest chemical magic, you can cook up a more muscular and versatile alkali from your cupboard. You just bake the baking soda.