Indigo (was Re: [Sca-cooks] Things to BUY at Pennsic

[Pixel, Goddess and Queen]

Stefan saith:

> > Indigo and certain other natural dyes

> I'm not sure that indigo is period, although it may be late period. But
> this is also the only place I've seen real *woad* for sale. The same
> vender carries oak galls imported from England for making ink.

Indigo is indeed period. Incidentally, the pigment indigotin is the blue
stuff in woad, although the resultant colors are slightly different in
part because the concentration of indigotin is less in woad.

OFC: there's at least one pottage in the Anglo/Norman corpus that is
specified to be indigo. As far as I have been able to find out, powdered
unreduced indigo is inert and thus *in theory* could be used as food
coloring. I'm still looking for a definitive answer on that, though.

Margaret