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The history of food color

food colored cakeAustralian food history blogger The Old Foodie has an interesting series on the history and meaning of food coloring, both naturally-occurring and man-made. A few choice tidbits:

- The crushed body of the cochineal insect, native to Mexico and South America, was the the original red food coloring. It's still possible to get cochineal dye, but it's expensive: It takes about 70,000 cochineal insects to make one pound of dye.

- Food coloring was sometimes used as paint for formal occasions. In 1846, renowned French chef Alexis Soyer painted a portrait of the Pasha of Egypt in pineapple cream for a state diner.

- Alfred Hitchcock once held a 'blue dinner party,' with blue-dyed soup, trout, chicken, venison, peaches, ice cream, bread and more. The guests were said to have been repelled.

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Filed Under: Food Oddities, On the Blogs
Tags: blogs, food coloring, food history, FoodColoring, oddities

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Reader comments (Page 1 of 1)

Hemi

10-12-2008 @5:05PM Hemi said... Too bad today it's all about cheap chemicals wreaking havoc on our health (yes you Yellow 5!!)
http://www.fooducate.com/blog/2008/10/11/artificial-food-coloring-update/
www.fooducate.com/blog
Reply

1 Comments / 1 Pages

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