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This page describes additives or treatments for food or drink that are now known to be toxic and are prohibited in food today.
This information has been left in for historical purposes but should not be acted upon.
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Red Saunders
Saffron.
Spanish saffron is generally considered the best va riety, but the high price of this coloring matter gives rise to frequent adulterations, and it is necessary to observe great caution in purchasing in order to procure a genuine article. The most certain test of pure saffron is concentrated sulphuric acid. It instantly changes the color of pure saffron to indigo blue. Saffron is prepared the same way as turmeric, and is used for coloring Sherry and Madeira.
Rhatany Is the root of a plant which grows in Peru. It is without smell, but has a bitter and very astringent taste. The powder is of a reddish color, which is extracted by infusion in alcohol, 95 per cent. Rhatany is used to color and impart an astringent taste to Port wine, and must be used with judgment and caution by parties employing it for that purpose, as too much of it will make the wine too astringent.
Alkanet.
This is the root of a plant which grows in the South of Europe. Its coloring principle may be extracted by infusing it 48 hours in alcohol, 95 per cent, and also by decocting it in boiling water. It yields a fine deep red color by either of these methods. Alkanet is used to color Port wine, and is much prized for that purpose. Red Saunders.
This tree is a native of India. The wood has little taste or smell.. It imparts a red color to alcohol, but not to water. Red Saunders is used for coloring Port wine. Infuse 6 lbs. 48 hours in 12 gals. alcohol, 95 per cent.
This is a dyer's tincture intended to be poured into wine, not a drink in itself, and every element of it fails modern food law. The notes below explain what the materials are and why none of them belongs in something anyone will swallow.
- Red saunders is not a food colour"Red saunders" is red sandalwood, Pterocarpus santalinus, whose pigment (santalin) is alcohol-soluble and water-insoluble, exactly as the text says. It has never been evaluated or approved as a food or beverage colorant in the US or EU, and the species is CITES-listed, so the timber trade is restricted in its own right.
- The strength of the infusionSix pounds of wood to twelve gallons of 95 percent alcohol is a heavy dye liquor by any standard, made at a scale that only makes sense in a commercial cellar. Nothing on this page states how much of it goes into a cask of wine, so there is no dose here at all, only a stock.
- Alkanet carries pyrrolizidine alkaloidsAlkanet root (Alkanna tinctoria) is a borage relative, and plants of that family contain pyrrolizidine alkaloids, which are liver toxins and are now tightly limited in food and herbal products. Alkanet survives as a colorant for soap, wood polish and cosmetics, not for wine.
- Rhatany is a drug, not a seasoningRhatany (Krameria root) is a strong tannin astringent that appears in old pharmacopoeias as a styptic and mouthwash ingredient. Adding it to Port to fake the grip of tannin is precisely the kind of blending the phrase "must be used with judgment" is covering for.
- The sulphuric acid testConcentrated sulphuric acid does give a striking colour change with genuine saffron -- the book reports indigo blue -- and that reaction was a standard bench test. It is not a kitchen operation: the acid is corrosive, mixing it with water releases a great deal of heat, and anything it touches is contaminated and must be discarded.
- What "doctoring" meantThis whole section belongs to the trade of making cheap wine pass as Sherry, Madeira or Port. Deliberately colouring and adulterating wine is now fraud under food labelling law regardless of what the material is.
- If you want colour in a drinkUse a current recipe and a food-grade colorant. Nothing on this page can be substituted into that role.
Books of this kind, sold to grocers, rectifiers and saloon keepers through the second half of the nineteenth century, were manuals for building branded wines and spirits out of neutral alcohol, sugar, flavourings and dye rather than out of grapes. Port was a frequent target of imitation, because its selling points -- deep red colour and a firm astringency -- can be counterfeited with a dyewood and a tannin root, and this section simply lists the options: alkanet, rhatany, red sandalwood. Red sandalwood had long been a legitimate textile and cabinetmaking dye in India before European colourmen took it up, and its use here is a straight borrowing from the dyehouse. Manuals like this one are part of the reason the pure-food agitation of the 1880s and 1890s gathered force on both sides of the Atlantic, culminating in the US Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, which made the practices described here plainly illegal rather than merely disreputable.