It is a component of what was formerly known as sal volatile and salt of hartshorn,[2] and produces a pungent smell when baked.

It should not be used to make moist baked items like cake since ammonia is hydrophilic and will leave a strong bitter taste.

Its use as a leavening agent, with associated controversy, goes back centuries: In the third kind of bread, a vesicular appearance is given to it by the addition to the dough of some ammoniacal salt, (usually the sub-carbonate,) which becomes wholly converted into a gaseous substance during the process of baking, causing the dough to swell out into little air vessels, which finally bursting, allow the gas to escape, and leave the bread exceedingly porous.

The bakers would never adopt it but from necessity: when good yeast cannot be procured, it forms an admirable and perfectly harmless substitute; costing the baker more, it diminishes his profit, while the consumer is benefited by the bread retaining the solid matter, which by the process of fermentation is dissipated in the form of alcohol and carbonic acid gas.

[5] Ammonium carbonate is the main component of smelling salts, although the commercial scale of their production is small.

Buckley's cough syrup from Canada today uses ammonium carbonate as an active ingredient intended to help relieve symptoms of bronchitis.