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Yellow Colouring
Yellow colouring for the ornamentation of pastry may be prepared by placing an ounce of hay-saffron in a sugar pan with a gill and a half of water, a small quantity of alum, and half an ounce of sugar. Set the pan on the fire, let the liquid boil for ten minutes, then pass it through a napkin.
A working stock of saffron colour for brushing onto pastry, from the days before bottled food dyes. The method is sound; the quantities are Victorian and assume a professional pastry kitchen buying saffron by the ounce.
- A gill and a halfAn imperial gill is a quarter-pint, about 142 ml, so this is roughly 213 ml of water. Ten minutes of open boiling will reduce it noticeably, leaving a more concentrated liquid.
- An ounce of saffronHay-saffron is simply the whole dried stigmas rather than powder. An ounce is 28 g, which today costs more than most people spend on a whole dinner. A pinch or two (0.2-0.5 g) in a few tablespoons of water gives ample colour for ornamenting pastry; scale the rest down to match.
- The alumPotassium alum, used here as a fixative to stop the colour bleeding. Food-grade alum is still sold for pickling. It is bitter and astringent in quantity, so "a small quantity" means a few grains, not a spoonful. The colouring works without it.
- Sugar panA small heavy pan, traditionally unlined copper. Any small stainless or enamelled saucepan does the job. Avoid aluminium, which reacts with alum.
- Pass it through a napkinStrain through a double layer of muslin or a coffee filter, and press the spent threads to recover the liquid held in them. Saffron releases much of its colour early in hot water, so the strands are likely to be largely spent by the end of the boil.
- Heat and saffronProlonged hard boiling drives off the aromatic compounds and leaves colour without much perfume. If you want the scent as well as the tint, steep in water just off the boil for twenty minutes instead of boiling ten.
- Using and keeping itBrush on before baking, thinned with a little water or egg wash. The finished liquid keeps a week refrigerated in a sealed jar; freeze it in ice-cube portions for longer.
Saffron was the standard yellow of the English kitchen for centuries, used for everything from saffron cakes and buns to colouring the crusts of medieval pies, where a golden surface was prized on grand tables. By the time Cassell's was compiled in the later nineteenth century it was competing with cheaper alternatives: turmeric, annatto, marigold petals and the new coal-tar dyes. Victorian food-safety debate was much occupied with adulterated and poisonous colourings, including mineral pigments such as lead chromate and arsenical greens. That context may help explain why a general household dictionary bothers to print a recipe for making your own colouring rather than telling the reader to buy a bottle. The alum here is doing the same job it does in textile dyeing, acting as a mordant to fix the colour, which suggests how closely the Victorian confectioner's craft sat alongside the dyer's.