SC - Re: Recipe from Murrell

[Elise Fleming]

Lucretzia wrote:
>By Gum-dragon I would say they mean Dragonsblood, which is  today and 
>has been since ancient times, an East Indian shrub known as Dracoena 
>draco, and the pigment is the dried resin sap of the plant. 

I disagree.  Gum-dragon is gum tragacanth in modern life, and is used 
in sugar paste recipes as part of the ingredients.  It is identified as 
"a gum obtained from various Asian or Easst European leguminous plants 
(genus Astragalus, esp. A. gummifer) that swells in water and is used 
in the arts and in pharmacy."  It is not a pigment and has no coloring 
of its own.  In modern gum paste, substitutions for gum tragacanth are 
used such as gum karaya, which is cheaper, but has a slight pinkish 
cast.

Alys Katharine
============================================================================

To be removed from the SCA-Cooks mailing list, please send a message to
Majordomo at Ansteorra.ORG with the message body of "unsubscribe SCA-Cooks".

============================================================================