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People have been coloring food for thousands of years with dyes like Saffron, carmine, turmeric, and squid ink.
by AlotOfReading 1y ago
People have been coloring food for thousands of years with dyes like Saffron, carmine, turmeric, and squid ink.
- mensetmanusman 1y agoThose are spices with taste.
- 1oooqooq 1y agoflash freezing some paprika to remove the flavor is probably easier than boiling coal in a vacuum to make red 3.
- AlotOfReading 1y agoCarmine is better known as Red 4 these days. Doesn't have much taste. Saffron adds basically no taste in the amounts typically used for something like Saffron rice. Squid ink again, mostly for the striking color. The taste isn't particularly great. Turmeric can go both ways, but the ground turmeric that's historically common for preservation reasons is much less flavorful than the fresh root. It's mostly a color thing. Of course, we can also just open up a medieval cookbook to see what they say. The Forme of Cury is a nice 14th century example that's available from Gutenberg: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/8102 https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/8102 As to colours, which perhaps would chiefly take place in suttleties, blood boiled and fried was used for dying black. saffron for yellow, and sanders for red. Alkenet is also used for colouring, and mulberries; amydon makes white; and turnesole [for yellow] Alkanet is commonly used today for Rogan josh, but historically would have been more known for rouge and dying wine. A Mediterranean cookbook might have instead chosen amaranth for the same purpose
- UncleMeat 1y agoYou need so little tumeric or annatto to color food and they impart so little flavor in so many applications that the reason they are used is very obvious.