p-fd-coloring-msg - 6/22/08
Period food colorings.
NOTE: See also the files: sotelties-msg, candy-msg, illusion-fds-msg, gilded-food-msg, Sgr-a-Cnftns-art, endoring-msg, marzipan-msg.
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Date: 17 Sep 1997 11:50:18 -0700
From: "Marisa Herzog" <marisa_herzog at macmail.ucsc.edu>
Subject: Re: SC - Julleran's Sugar/C
<snip>
I had also thought of rolling out a sheet of marzipan or something similar and
topping it with various fruit "sauces" in a heraldic design. But again, have
run into trouble trying to accomadate the various colors. Red is easy, but
what would work well to get a good yellow, green, blue, black or purple. Any
ideas.
<sniP>
you could also do a thin cheese cake or torte for a base.
yellow- yellow plums, apricot, lemon
purple- grapes, blackberries
green- (not period kiwi), lime, gooseberry
blue has me stumped
- -brid
Date: Wed, 17 Sep 1997 16:17:28 -0400 (EDT)
From: Mark Schuldenfrei <schuldy at abel.MATH.HARVARD.EDU>
Subject: Re: SC - Julleran's Sugar/Candy Glass
I had always wanted to make a rendition of coats of arms as a subtlety,
but have always ran into trouble with coming up with period ways to get
the various colors. (ie not food colors)
Hmmm. My wife and I (mostly her, she's the one with the Laurel... I just
hang out because its fun) have used commercial food coloring paste, as a
rule.
Why? Because most of the coloring agents used in period were poisonous, or
are impossible to get.
Given a need, therefore, to use a non-period substitute, you can make a
choice: something they could have used but didn't (HISSS) or something they
couldn't have used, and didn't. She/we have chosen the later. Mostly
because it works, and its easier. (You have to understand that it can take
her several months just to mold a soteltie for an event, with the time we
have to spare. If we had to make fresh colors, which can spoil, and make
them each time we spent an evening on a project, it would move the project
from hard to impossible.)
what do you mean by food paste? can you add it to the sugar to make
colored glass or must it be painted on later. Can you add anything to
the sugar or does it cause havoc with the sugar as it cools?
Both. Food paste is a highly concentrated form of food safe dye, available
in cake baking and decorating stores. You can also purchase a powder form,
but I find the paste easier to handle. You can mix it in, or paint it on.
(We dissolve it in vodka, which makes a fast drying paint that is also food
safe.)
I had also thought of rolling out a sheet of marzipan or something similar
and topping it with various fruit "sauces" in a heraldic design. But
again, have run into trouble trying to accomadate the various colors. Red
is easy, but what would work well to get a good yellow, green, blue, black
or purple. Any ideas.
Yellow? Saffron. Green? That's not too hard: crush damp parsley in a
mortar or with a food processor, and the green juice works. (And, its
period!) Black would be hard: I'd consider walnuts, purple would be blue
berries. Blue? As George Carlin said "There is no blue food". I dunno.
Tibor
Date: Wed, 17 Sep 1997 22:40:34 -0400 (EDT)
From: Uduido at aol.com
Subject: SC - Coloring foods
<< Red is easy, but
what would work well to get a good yellow, green, blue, black or purple.
Any ideas. >>
Yellow -saffron ( period)
Green -parsley (period)
Red- Sauders (period)
Blue-purple plums (maybe if you toned it down)
Black- a mixture of all of the above
Purple- Sauders and purple plums
Orange- saffron and parsley
That's my best guess.
Lord Ras
Date: Thu, 18 Sep 1997 10:54:36 -0500
From: "Jack Hubbard" <jack at configdotsys.com>
Subject: SC - Re: Stained Glass Questions
> Murkial af Maun asked:
>
> >2. What flavors would have been period, if any? I usually use
> >wintergreen, anise, cinnamon and peppermint oils for my candies.
While not seen in hard sugar candies, these flavors I have for Sirrup's:
Violets, Gilleflowers, Cowslip, Rose, Damask Roses, Barberries,
Mulberries,Rasps (rasberies), Leamons, Poumcitrons, Pippins (that is
apples), Purslane, Liquorish, Wood Sorrell, and Hyssope. I suspect that
Saunders( red sandlewood) wood work well too. As for coloring agents the
rose and sandlewood would make red, liquorish for black?, blackberries for
purple....
Yours,
Eoian (who thinks he may go home and destroy the kitchen tonight with all
these ideas)
Date: Sun, 21 Sep 1997 14:03:27 SAST-2
From: "Ian van Tets" <ivantets at botzoo.uct.ac.za>
Subject: SC - Re: food colouring
Hi, since I'm several digests behind, someone has probably already
written in before me, but according to [Heck I've forgotten the
title] From Taillevent to Escoffier, spinach was fequently used as a
green dye, even in sweet things, and mulberries for blue.
Cheers,
Cairistiona
Date: Thu, 2 Oct 1997 15:33:28 -0400 (EDT)
From: Stephen Bloch <sbloch at adl15.adelphi.edu>
Subject: Re: SC - coloring agents
Tibor wrote:
> Yellow? Saffron. Green? That's not too hard: crush damp parsley in a
> mortar or with a food processor, and the green juice works. (And, its
> period!) Black would be hard: I'd consider walnuts, purple would be blue
> berries. Blue? As George Carlin said "There is no blue food". I dunno.
I'll second the saffron for yellow and parsley juice for green; both of
those appear often in medieval English cookbooks. I think the most
common black I've seen in medieval cookbooks is blood, but you might not
want to use that in your marzipan :-) For purple, the word is ALKANET.
And for blue, TURNSOLE. I believe both of these last two are dried
flowers. I bought a bag of alkanet at Pennsic a few years ago, put the
plastic bag (still sealed) into my spice drawer, and a month later the
shelf-paper lining the drawer was a permanent purple where the bag had
been. As for turnsole, it's not clear what modern Latin name
corresponds to it. Is it the same thing as heliotrope (the literal
translation from French into Greek), or are they just two different
flowers that follow the sun? We bought a bag of very blue dried flowers
at a Middle Eastern grocery, suspecting they might be turnsole, but we
haven't really experimented with them yet.
mar-Joshua ibn-Eleazar ha-Shalib
Stephen Bloch
sbloch at panther.adelphi.edu
Date: Fri, 10 Apr 1998 09:44:22 -0500
From: Philip & Susan Troy <troy at asan.com>
Subject: Re: SC - Spices-another source
...
> On another thought, I just picked up some ground red sandalwood, and am
> dying to try it for coloring ability in food...
>
> Bogdan
Sandalwood does color food, although it isn't strictly a dye in the
sense that saffron is. It is more along the lines of sprinkling on, or
mixing with, tiny reddish particles. It also is nowhere with saffron as
an aromatic or flavoring: sandalwood tastes a bit like chewing a cedar
pencil.
Adamantius
Date: Tue, 14 Apr 1998 13:22:48 -0400
From: "marilyn traber" <mtraber at email.msn.com>
Subject: Re: SC - Ingredient substitutions
>>But doesn't bottled food coloring do the same thing? Saffron is sure
to flavor as well as color when added to a dish. You may approach
enough yellow color change with sufficient ground daffodil petals, but
will not successfully recreate the dish flavor to much accuracy.
My point was that none of the recipes redacted that have saffron say
anything about the taste, many only refer to coloring the recipe with
various substances like saunders and saffron, alkanet and others mentioned
at various times. Mostly when there is reference to flavor, it is to make
bitter, sweet, sour or savory-and not referring to saffron, saunders and the
like but to use peppers, cinnamon, galengale and the like.
I definitely agree that the lesser affluent didn't get into the cookbook
game until way late, when there was an interest in flavor substitutions for
the more expensive goodies-after all, hopping beers in the European fashion
was frowned upon in the Isles until fairly late-bittering was accomplished
with various gruitt blends.
margali
Date: Mon, 25 May 1998 09:57:24 -0400
From: "marilyn traber" <mtraber at email.msn.com>
Subject: Re: SC - Endoring [was: Selene Intro]
soak the saffron in 1 tsp water to extract the color, and put the glaze on
late in the cooking process-when i do my chicken normandy i put the
egg/saffron glaze on in the last 10 minutes or so.
margali
Date: Thu, 24 Dec 1998 14:13:33 -0500
From: "Margo Hablutzel" <Margo.Hablutzel.margolh at nortelnetworks.com>
Subject: SC - RE: Heraldic Gelatine and Converted Jews
Using milk to make an opaque white gelatin is common, at least in
asian desserts (often using agar, a vegetarian gelatine-like substance). I
have at least one period receipt for a milk custard that is of similar
texture. So use milk.
Black is traditionally done with cooked blood. No kidding. There
is a receipt in "To the King's Taste" or "To the Queen's Taste" which speaks
of making striped coloured fat, and blood is used for black. If you
absolutely must have black, try using a root beer syrup or something like
that, if you want it to be periodoidish.
For purple, grape juice may work. Note that grape juice may end up
looking more like red or black, depending upon the juice and the opacity.
Morgan
Date: Sat, 26 Dec 1998 13:43:37 -0600
From: allilyn at juno.com (LYN M PARKINSON)
Subject: Re: SC - Heraldic Jell-O
>> purple<< experiment with turnsole and grape juice
If you get a fairly good purple, try making a semi-liquid of cooked
raisins and adding that, in order to get a black. There's a black dye
you use for pysanky, but it's not edible.
Allison
allilyn at juno.com, Barony Marche of the Debatable Lands, Pittsburgh, PA
Kingdom of Aethelmearc
Date: Thu, 31 Dec 1998 11:11:43 EST
From: LyAngharad at aol.com
Subject: Re: SC - purple fleur de lis?
Just a thought here.
People are suggesting various colored vegetables and other colored things as
dye stuffs for foods. Hey guys. Remember that the pH (acidity/alkalinity)
of the substance to be colored will do weird things with many colors.
If you want an example, notice what happens to perfectly good blueberry juice
(nicely blue) when you add tap water (probably alkaline) to it (GREEN!).
Test on a small amount before trying a big batch. And bake before deciding
whether this is going to 'work' or not!
Angharad
Barony of Namron (Norman, OK)
Date: Thu, 31 Dec 1998 10:28:59 -0600
From: "Decker, Terry D." <TerryD at Health.State.OK.US>
Subject: RE: SC - purple fleur de lis?
> If you want an example, notice what happens to perfectly good blueberry juice
> (nicely blue) when you add tap water (probably alkaline) to it (GREEN!).
> Test on a small amount before trying a big batch. And bake before deciding
> whether this is going to 'work' or not!
>
> Bear -- any comments from you on this???
>
> Angharad
Sorry, Angharad, I don't have any experience in using natural food colorings
with doughs and I don't know of any references which cover it. I was
planning to experiment with coloring decorations for loaves of bread, but I
haven't had the chance.
I would think that your comments on the acidity and alkalinity induced
problems is probably correct, but you can use de-ionized water for baking.
Something like a Britta water filter (which removes metals) will likely be
the best bet. This doesn't alter the problem where the other ingredients
are concerned, but it does reduce human induce contaminants.
I would recommend running experiments simply because you are working with
organic dyes and you need to know how they are going to react.
Bear
Date: Thu, 18 Feb 1999 17:01:03 -0600 (CST)
From: alysk at ix.netcom.com (Elise Fleming)
Subject: SC - Sap Green: Was: Recipe from Murrell
Greetings. Cindy questioned what was sap green. (I thought I had sent
that info in the article we are doing???) Daniel Thompson in his book
on (Methods and Materials of Painting???) gives sap green as a pigment
made from buckthorn berries. It was used as a food colorant,
especially in confections, through at least the early 1800s when it is
mentioned as a coloring agent in A Treatise on Adulterations of Food by
F. Accum, 1820. I can't locate Thompson's book but Accum says " Now
sap-green itself, as prepared from the juice of the buckthorn berries,
is no doubt a harmless substance, but the manufacturers of this colour
have for many years past produced various tints, some extremely bright,
which there can be no doubt are effected by addin preparations of
copper."
Fascinating treatise - one of the Mallinckrodt reprints for which I
joyously relate that I got for a mere $10 per book at a used book store
in Minneapolis. I was about to leave the store with other treasures
when I spied these on the top shelf. Got all but the Platina reprint.
I still chuckle in glee at the thought of only $10 for each book. I've
seen them for $100 in used book lists!
Alys Katharine... They're mine! All mine! :-)
Date: Wed, 17 Mar 1999 11:37:46 -0500
From: renfrow at skylands.net (Cindy Renfrow)
Subject: Re: SC - A different egg question
>At our most recent cooks guild meeting we dyed eggs using natural dyes.
>The colors came out amazingly bright! I will post pictures once I get them
>developed.
>I know the cabbage and the onion-skin dyed eggs are safe to eat. I am
>wondering if the eggs boiled for 20 minutes in water containing crushed
>cochneal (did I get the spelling at least close?) are safe to eat? And
>where could I find more information on natural dyes - other colors, period
>colors... I found 2 relevant web sites, and of those, one lists dyes and
>then states some of these (and does not specify which) are not safe to eat
>;-(.
>
>Gwen-Cat
>Caerthe
Hello! Dame Alys & I are working on an article on the topic of period food
coloring agents. All the following are safe to eat, but may flavor the eggs.
Alys, if you're there, I know we discussed egg dyes several years ago.
This is what I sent you :
saffron/white vinegar-yellow;
sandalwood/white vinegar-rose pink;
yellow onion skin/white vinegar-mahogany brown;
and saffron/sandalwood-white vinegar-orange.
I tried parsley/white vinegar for green, but the egg stayed white.
And what you replied to me (found in a newspaper article): All the coloring
agents were boiled in 3 inches of water with 1 tsp. white vinegar for 1
hour. Then the eggs are added & cooked in the dye for 20 minutes.
spinach leaves/vinegar - pale green
red onion skins/vinegar - pale blue
beets/vinegar - pink
yellow onion skins/vinegar - yellow or gold
paprika/vinegar - rusty brown
coffee or walnut shells/vinegar - deep brown
frozen blueberries/vinegar - pale gray/blue
saffron or turmeric/vinegar - bright yellow
red cabbage/vinegar - blue
Variation: use 1 tsp. alum instead of white vinegar to set the dye.
Cindy Renfrow
renfrow at skylands.net
Date: Wed, 17 Mar 1999 14:38:57 -0600
From: Jennifer Carlson <JCarlson at firstchurchtulsa.org>
Subject: SC - RE: A Different Egg Question
Cochineal is used as a food dye, as well as for fabric. It gives pink
grapefruit juice its commercially-desired pink tint, and is behind the
policy of many a church injunction against red fruit punches at receptions.
I've noticed a couple of products in the last few years that have changed
to using the word "kermes" instead - guess they realized that lots of folks
know what cochineal really is. A dye expert can tell you about the
differences between cochineal and kermes (different species of bugs, both
of which yield a red pigment).
Talana
Jcarlson at firstchurchtulsa.org
Date: Wed, 17 Mar 1999 18:36:01 EST
From: LrdRas at aol.com
Subject: Re: SC - A different egg question
mirhaxa at swcp.com writes:
<< For this list, I have a vague notion the cochineal is New World. ;)
Mirhaxa >>
This is correct. Cochineal (Dactylopious coccus Costa), is an insect.
Carminic Acid is the red coloring