Spinach green is frequently used for coloring purees, soups, butters, sauces and sugar. It is the healthiest coloring matter, and if possible use no other. Spinach green is prepared with very green, fresh spinach, well washed, pounded in a mortar and when well reduced to a paste, extract all the juice through a coarse cloth, and place this in an untinned copper sugar pan, and heat it. till it decomposes, then pour it over a fine sieve so the pulp or coloring matter remains on top: the strained liquid is colorless and useless. For yellow, use a decoction of saffron or dandelion flowers; for red, employed for coloring bisques, orchanet dissolved in butter is used. The roucou annotto also gives a yellowish red and is much used. Vegetable colors, and clarified carmine, Breton Landrin, are those mostly employed. Breton Landrin green is beautiful for coloring sugar cooked to crack, as it is not detrimental to its transparency.

Fig. 39.

Colorings: Carmine and Cochineal Red. - Take two ounces of No. 42 carmine, broken in pieces; wet with a little cold water; crush in a small mortar and dilute with a little twenty-five degree syrup. Besides this, boil two quarts of syrup also to twenty-five degrees, mix in the carmine, boil up once, strain through a napkin and leave to cool, then add a few coffeespoonfuls of liquid ammonia and pour into bottles.

Fur Red Cochineal

Finely pound five ounces of fine cochineal; place it in a copper pan and moisten with a quart of water, adding three ounces of cream of tartar, three ounces of alum and six ounces of sugar; set the pan on the fire and let the liquid reduce to half; now put in two gills of spirit of wine; boil up once, strain through a napkin and pour into bottles.