(n.) Potassium nitrate; niter; a white crystalline substance, KNO3, having a cooling saline taste, obtained by leaching from certain soils in which it is produced by the process of nitrification (see Nitrification, 2). It is a strong oxidizer, is the chief constituent of gunpowder, and is also used as an antiseptic in curing meat, and in medicine as a diuretic, diaphoretic, and refrigerant.
Example Sentences:
(1) Buy as little as possible – even 50g will be enough for several fully grown pigs – and weigh it carefully, as saltpetre is toxic in high doses.
(2) Obviously, the change from vegetable dyes to saltpetre for the coloring or color preservation, respectively, of meat occurred between 1600 and 1750, probably near 1700.
(3) For each kilo of meat, you'll need 30g salt, 10-30g sugar (depending how sweet you like your bacon), up to 10g of whatever dried herbs and spices you fancy – much more if you're using fresh – and just 0.25g to 1g of saltpetre, AKA potassium nitrate or KN03.
(4) Its features are comparable but not quite identical with those of Christensen's saltpetre-induced PXE which the author considers to be an exogenous variety of pseudoxanthoma elasticum.
(5) In order to settle the question of when saltpetre (nitrate) came in use as an additive to human food, a number of historic cookery books from Germany and Austria were reviewed.
(6) He pioneered new technologies – one of which bears his name – to produce saltpetre by oxidising nitrogen from air, and made industrial quantities of hydrogen by water electrolysis.