SC - RE:[TY] cooking query

[Philip & Susan Troy]

"Decker, Terry D." wrote:
> 
> > Medieval Europeans weren't as
> > specific about colors as we tend to be nowadays. For example, oranges
> > were sometimes described as "golden", etc.
> >
> > Adamantius
> >
> I don't think I would use "gold" as an example.  Gold (the metal) comes in a
> wide range of yellows depending on the impurities.  Gold with a high copper
> content (IIRC) can come very close to an orange (the fruit) in color.  In
> the Middle Ages, your description of gold (the color) would probably depend
> on the particular golds (the metal) you had seen.

All right, fair enough. Perhaps golden oranges isn't a good example of
my point (although even if some gold was orange, it doesn't
automatically explain or justify oranges being called golden; it just
says that some gold was orange; bear in mind that there are recipes for
faux oranges that are clearly written for people who had never seen an
orange.) How about beautiful women being described as having skin white
as snow? How about red quince paste, which is a brown so dark as to be
almost black, versus white quince paste, which is amber? People with
brown hair being called So-and-So the Black, which went on until the
20th century in parts of Northern Europe? I could go on...

As I say, sometimes the way we interpret a medieval color term doesn't
mean they interpreted it the same way.  

Adamantius
- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com
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