[Sca-cooks] Thistle Recipe from Fabulous Feasts

[David Friedman]

>I have made this, once with great success, and once without.
>
>The object of the recipe is to get the rice stuffing for the artichoke a
>nice purply color, so that it looks like a thistle in bloom when served.
>The rice is flavored with chicken stock as I recall, and is supposed to be
>savory.  We did this (many, many years ago) in the test kitchen and it
>turned out great.  We loved it.  The blueberries are just there for color
>and don't add much flavor, so it didn't taste like it should have been
>sweet.

The period ingredient I'm familiar with for coloring things blue is 
turnsole. Does anyone know of a period recipe that uses blueberries 
for coloring? That uses blueberries at all? So far the nearest I have 
found is a reference to whortleberries (which can be a name for 
blueberries) in Hildegard of Bingen--warning against eating them, 
because they are bad for you.
-- 
David/Cariadoc
www.daviddfriedman.com