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Mallow or Malva Flowers
healthy ever In coloring wine, care should be taken to imitate as closely as possible the natural tint of the genuine article; over-coloring should be avoided. A little alum or tartaric acid increases the brightness of any color. As a general thing we prefer the berry juices for coloring wine, particularly that of the huckleberry. The mallow flower is, however, most generally used, as it is prepared without much trouble, and yields a fine color.
Mallow or Malva Flowers.
The mallow or malva flower is a native of Europe, growing abundantly on waste grounds and by the waysides. It is also sometimes cultivated in our gardens. This flower, which gives a beautiful color to water, is used for coloring Port and Claret wines, and we consider it one of the best articles that can be employed for that purpose. Weigh two pounds, and steep the red petals in cold water for five or six hours. Tartaric acid mixed with the mallow gives a bright red color, and salt tartar a deep purple red.
Another method of preparing mallow flowers is as follows: infuse one pound of the flowers in one gallon boiling water for half an hour, then draw off the liquid, and repeat the operation a second time until the coloring matter is all extracted. The first plan, with cold water, gives the finest color, but the second way produces the largest quantity of coloring matter. A little huckleberry juice may be added which will also give a fine bouquet to the wine, and when coloring Port wine add a little elderberry juice. Mallow flowers are more easily prepared than any other coloring, and as they give an excellent red tint, are largely employed by manufacturers.
This is not a drink but a colouring extract, one of a long series of "doctoring" preparations meant to make thin or manufactured wine pass for Port or Claret. The chemistry is sound and the plant is edible, but the quantities are vague and the purpose is fraud.
- Which mallowThe plant meant is Malva sylvestris, high or common mallow, whose petals are streaked rose-purple. It is not marshmallow (Althaea officinalis), whose flowers are pale and whose root is the confectioner's part, and not the ornamental hibiscus mallows.
- The missing measurementThe first method says to weigh two pounds of petals and steep them in cold water without ever saying how much water. The only stated proportion anywhere in the piece is the second method's one pound to one gallon.
- Salt tartar"Salt of tartar" is potassium carbonate, an alkali. "Tartaric acid" is the acid found naturally in grapes. The recipe is exploiting the fact that mallow's anthocyanin pigment is a pH indicator: acid pulls it toward bright red, alkali toward blue-purple, which is why the same petals can be made to imitate either Claret or Port.
- AlumThe alum mentioned in the opening lines is potassium aluminium sulphate, used here as a mordant to brighten the tint. It is astringent and has no place in a beverage; period adulteration inquiries singled it out repeatedly.
- Cold versus boilingThe book is right that the cold infusion gives the finer colour. Anthocyanins degrade with heat and prolonged contact, so boiling water strips more pigment out of the petals but leaves it browner and less stable. Neither extract keeps: expect the colour to fade within days in light and warmth.
- Raw elderberry juiceThe uncooked elderberry juice suggested for Port has cyanogenic compounds in the unripe fruit, stems and seeds; elderberry intended for consumption is normally cooked. Huckleberry juice is harmless, though it will add its own flavour, not merely "bouquet".
- LegalityAdding colouring matter to wine is tightly restricted under modern wine law, and labelling regimes treat undeclared colouring as adulteration. As a dye for icing, cloth or paper the extract is a curiosity; as an addition to wine it is not something to reproduce.
Doctoring wine was a recognised trade in the nineteenth century, and manuals of this kind were sold to publicans, rectifiers and small bottlers who compounded "Port" and "Claret" from cheap base wine, spirit, sugar and colour. Mallow grew free on waste ground, cost nothing to gather, and yielded a pigment that swung from red to purple with a pinch of acid or alkali -- which is why the book calls it the colouring "most generally used". British and American investigations into food adulteration from the 1820s onward, and later the pure food legislation of the early twentieth century, took direct aim at practices of this kind; mallow, elderberry, logwood and cochineal turn up repeatedly in analysts' reports of doctored wine. The book's calm insistence that over-colouring "should be avoided" is not a matter of taste but of not getting caught.