SC - OT - recipe from Murrell

[Cindy Renfrow]

<snip>
>

Hello!  Thanks for your input.  Dame Alys Katherine & I are working on a
food coloring article.

>Shell silver is the same as shell gold (apart from the obvious). They are
>called 'shell' because that is what they were stored and sold in - mussel or
>similar shells. Shell gold is basically gold ground into dust in a mortar,
>then mixed with a binder such as gum arabic, and dried in the shell. It's
>then added to a liquid binder when you want to use it. It's a very
>metal-intensive paint, very expensive and usually used for calligraphy,
>highlights and similar decorative touches. If you are thinking of doing
>edible plate sugar with gold decoration, gold leaf uses a lot less metal and
>is therefore more economic.

No, we're not planning on eating this.  I just wanted to know what 'shell'
meant in this context.


>Azure (Azurite - natural copper carbonate) would be poisonous to consume -
>vinegar or no vinegar!

This was the general consensus.

>Painters usually used any plant they could get their hands on with stable
>sap to get sapgreen, so toxicity would vary. I'm unsure which pigment/color
>they mean by 'Rosa-paris'.

Do you have a reference for this for sap green?

>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. It is mentioned by Pliny
>and various other classical and medieval authors (mainly for the amusingly
>silly story that it was the gore from a battle between a dragon and an
>elephant!). This was mainly used to colour gilding red (as they preferred
>red-gold) and help other metals imitate gold. It was also occasionally used
>in illumination, being an orange/brownish/red colour. It is non-poisonous
>and also quite transparent.

Is this what Gerard calls Draco arbor?  I believe, however, that gum dragon
is a corruption of the name gum tragacanth.


>Is this primarily a sweet recipe or were they actually meant to be used?
>
>Cordialmente
>Lucretzia


Regards,

Cindy


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