[Sca-cooks] Colored Salt

lilinah at earthlink.net lilinah at earthlink.net
Wed Jul 15 17:31:11 PDT 2009


> I was looking up a bug bite itchy remedy that I had been given as a gift a
> long time ago. The list of ingredients specifically said white salt.  That
> sent me down the path of colored salts. Are there documented examples of 
> the other color salts (not ones that were colored intentionally) used in 
> period?
> Aldyth

Well, there's a recipe for coloring salt in the Arabic-language corpus from al-Kitab Wasf al-At'ima al-Mu'tada ("The Book of the Description of Familiar Foods"), 1373.

Milh Mutayyab (spiced salt)

ORIGINAL RECIPE:
Take medium crystals of rock salt and put them in a new pottery jar and seal its lid. Leave it in the tannur on a mild fire for a whole day, and take it out. When salt is cold, mill it fine.

Then take the mentioned spices, namely coriander, cumin, sesame, hemp seed, nigella, poppy seed, fennel, asafoetida root and anise. As for the coriander, sesame, hemp seed, cumin and nigella, they are lightly toasted.  Then the total of these spices should be as much a third of the salt, and they are mixed with it. If you want it musa‘tar, add dried thyme leaves to it.

It might be made dyed. That is that it is coloured before being cooked, then dried in the shade. Then grind it again and mix the flavourings with it. Among the colours it is dyed, some like red. Sumac juice is extracted and the salt is put in for a day and a night, then it is taken out and dried as mentioned. As for yellow, it is with saffron, or with the water in which thyme has been steeped. The green is chard water And the blue in water in which a little indigo has been steeped. And in this way, the colour you want.
So understand that.

Urtatim (that's err-tah-TEEM)



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