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What would food be like without color? Pretty bland for sure. Also, it would be very hard to determine whether food is good or has gone bad, whether it’s ripe or whether it’s sour or sweet. We use color a lot to make judgment calls on food.
Color is also full of chemistry, there are a lot of different molecules and phenomena that play a role in giving a product color.
Browse through our archives to learn more about color in food!
The secret behind that yellow dal, yellow rice, or beautifully colored curry? Chances are, it’s turmeric! A mere teaspoon can color a sauce or dish. Aside from those ‘typical’ dishes, you might also find it added to cheese, butter, or…
The other day, having some rhubarb left and not wanting to make a rhubarb pie, cake or crumble (>90% of rhubarb recipes online seem to be for one of those!), I decided to try a rhubarb ice cream. I had…
There is a very easy way to distinguish a fresh uncooked shrimp from a cooked one: its colour. If you’ve ever cooked shrimp before, you will have noticed this colour transformation. The shrimp will convert from a blue, translucent colour…
In what feels like decades ago in social media lifetimes, mirror glazes were quite the hype in 2016. Beautifully shiny and colorful glazed cakes were everywhere. Whether they were space or galaxy-themed, simply stylish, or brightly colored, they looked amazing…
Whoever decided to make red velvet cake must have had some strong bright red color at hand. Red velvet cakes also contain a good amount of dark brown cocoa powder. It’s not easy to color these products red. Unless, that is,…
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…
Colour is so important in food. A colour can make or break a food (or drink for that matter). But it also gives you a cue as to what flavours to expect. Research has shown repeatedly that the colour of…
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…
When unwrapping a piece of meat the other day I noticed that it wasn’t just one red colour. Instead, I saw brown, purplish and red/pink colour all in just one piece of meat! Was anything going wrong here? Was my…
(Dis)coloration 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…
Pickling is one of those cooking techniques that can completely transform or upgrade your food without a lot of trouble. Simply put the vegetables, or whatever you’ve decided to pickle in an acidic brine for anywhere between 5 minutes and…