[Sca-cooks] blue food coloring

[Daniel Myers]

On Sunday, February 2, 2003, at 06:47 PM, Nancy Kiel wrote:

> Can anyone suggest a period blue food coloring?  I looked into
> turnsole, but
> it comes from heliotrope which is poisonous.  Thanks!

Blue seems to have been a tough color - In The Colorful Cook [Renfrow &
Fleming, CA#109] I find lots of ways to get reds, yellows, and greens,
but very few blues.

Cindy Renfrow (are you reading this, Cindy?) may be able to point you
towards others (or those that I missed), but here's what I found:

	elder bark
	the flowers of bluebottles (Campanula or Scilla species)
	borage flowers (Borago officinalis)
	indigo (is indigo food safe? the indigo dye vat my wife uses certainly
doesn't smell like anything I'd want near food)
	woad (is woad food safe?)

There are others listed (such as copper carbonate and cobalt-based
ground glass), but they were also noted as being generally bad for you
(i.e. toxic), so they're not any more suitable than turnsole.

- Doc


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  Edouard Halidai  (Daniel Myers)
  http://www.medievalcookery.com/
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