The chemical reaction metaphor describes computation in terms of a chemical solution in which molecules interact freely according to reaction rules. Chemical models use the multiset as their basic data structure. Computation proceeds by rewritings of the multiset which consume elements according to reaction conditions and produce new elements according to specific transformation rules. Since the introduction of Gamma in the mid-eighties, many other chemical formalisms have been proposed such as the Cham, the P-systems and various higher-order extensions. The main objective of this paper is to identify a basic calculus containing the very essence of the chemical paradigm and from which extensions can be derived and compared to existing chemical models.