SC - vermilion/kermes, was Apicius / Kitab al-Tabikh

[Stefan li Rous]

Cindy Renfrow/Sincgiefu asked:
> To change this thread completely... There are a few recipes & mentions in
> the Baghdad Cookery book of a red food coloring which has been translated
> as 'vermilion'.
> 
> In one instance (p. 24), it is being smeared on boiled eggs to make
> vermilioned eggs. The halwa recipe (p. 210) is colored with saffron or
> vermilion.
> 
> I was wondering if anyone knew whether the original was referring to the
> poisonous vermillion/cinnabar (mercuric sulphide -- zanjifrah), or to
> kermes (qirmiz/chermez)?

C. Anne Wilson in "The Appetite and the Eye" specifically mentions this
cookbook and talks of a halwa and a relish recipe. She says vermillion,
but I don't know if she is depending upon someone elses translations.

She gives a possible reason for using vermillion as well as gold on
page 18:
"Gold itself, on account of it's longetivity, was regarded by Arab
physicians as a medicine which would lengthen the span of human life.
Those who could not afford to consume real gold could at least consume
its colour in saffron-tinted food, and could thus ingest some tiny part
of the life-enhancing quality of gold. Red and white, the other two
favorite colours of Arab cookery, were connected with cinnabar, that is,
mercury sulphide, and with mercury itself. Cinnabar, which is the red
earth known as vermillion, was the starting material for the alchemist,
who extracted mercury from cinnabar, and then tried with the help of
sulfur to turn it into gold. Red food shared the colour of cinnabar
and white food came close to the silver colour of mercury, and both
were beneficial to the eater because their colors were those of gold
while it was still passing through its uncompleted stages."

- -- 
Lord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
Mark S. Harris             Austin, Texas           stefan at texas.net
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