[Sca-cooks] Foods available in early Anglo Saxon England

[Amy Cooper]

<snip>

On Mon, Mar 24, 2008 at 4:52 PM, Dragon <dragon at crimson-dragon.com> wrote:

> Amy Cooper wrote:
> >I apologize, as this is only vaguely food related, since I'm actually
> >looking for dyestuffs...
> >
> >1) What berries (if any) would have been available?
> >2) Would the Romans have brought beets with them?
> >
> >On the other hand, if anyone knows of a foodstuff, that would have been
> >available in early Anglo-Saxon England, is pretty easily found now, and
> is
> >capable of dying wool sort of red/purple (we're using madder in another
> part
> >of the outfit, and don't have time for indigo/woad/weld, and want to stay
> >away from yellow-greens), please speak up! The dye-ing experts on the
> team
> >have scoured their Anglo-Saxon books to no avail, and have several
> natural
> >dyes books available, but they are not sure what would have been
> available
> >in the time/place we're trying to do.
> ---------------- End original message. ---------------------
>
> How about listing the items that will give the colors you want? It
> might be easier to go down a list and confirm or deny them than to
> try to make an all inclusive list.
>
> Dragon

</snip>
Ok, the things were were looking at specifically were:

Berries, like blackberries, blueberries, cherries, etc
Beets (I suspect the Romans would have brought them)
Cabbage (red cabbage apparently can do a nifty pale blue dye)
Sandalwood
Grape juice? I'm thinking red grape here, like welches

The problem is, I'm not a fiber artist at all (heck, I *barely* embroider
and bead, much less spin and dye my own stuff). I don't have any of the
books in front of me, unfortunately, but I remember talking about these few
above.

Many thanks,

Ilsebet