All of a sudden, somewhere in September, supermarkets start filling up with pumpkins. The common orange, but also green, yellow and even blueish pumpkins. Pumpkins work great in a lot of dishes, whether it’s pies, cakes, breads, pancakes, soups or just roasted from the oven. Since pumpkins are quite big, …
Whoever decided to make red velvet cookies with dark cocoa powder must have had some strong bright red coloring. Coloring a dark brown recipe to become red is a lot harder than coloring a simple whitish batter or cookie dough. Real red is only achieved with quite a heap of red …
Recently I made a red cabbage salad, on which I sprinkled some lime juice. The salad wasn’t meant to be eaten the same day. When I looked back a day later I could see a line of light pink cabbage, exactly where I squeezed that lime juice, whereas the rest …
Carrots are orange, aren’t they? No, not necessarily! Purple and yellow carrots are a relatively new variation of carrots in our supermarket (at least in my perception, until I found out it’s actually the purple ones that were there before the orange ones). Most supermarkets still only sell the orange …
Before making a red velvet cake or making red velvet cookies I never knew what red velvet cake or cookies were. I assumed they were plain vanilla cookies with a bright red colour. How could I know they contain cocoa powder (= brown!)? Why on earth are we trying to colour a …
Fruits and vegetables are probably the most colourful foods on our table. Meats and fish are all pretty similar (white/reddish), carbs are often yellow/brown/white, but fruits and vegetables can be so many different colours. These colours aren’t just pretty, they are also fascinating for scientists to study. Colour molecules are …
Ever seen and eaten a bright green pistachio ice cream which didn’t taste like pistachio at all? I surely have. Ever tried making pistachio ice cream and had it turn out brownish instead of the nice bright green ice cream? Again, I surely have. I’ve seen pistachio ice creams varying from …
Any time I’m cooking, or baking I think about my recipes and why I have to do what I do. So, when unwrapping a pack of meat before cooking I noticed all the different colours of this formerly red piece of meat. I saw brown, purplish and red/pink! Was anything going …
Just imagine how the world would look like if there weren’t any colors. All would be in black and white, just like tv’s in the older days. Life would be less interesting, nature less beautiful and, oranges wouldn’t be orange. Ever noticed how colourful a lot of foods, especially fruits …
(Dis)colouration of foods is a well beloved topic of food chemists. Colour pigments are highly complex, as are the reactions to form them. Browning especially, is a favorite. It’s interesting because there are various chemically completely different ways to turn something brown, with the same end-result: they’re brown (think old …
