Chris Woolgar (University of Southampton)

Understanding the perception of colour in late medieval England is a difficult task, but it is one for which there is a good deal of scattered evidence. There are theoretical descriptions, anaylsing colour and its gradations, and implicit in many texts are associations between colour and value, for example, virtue and holiness. A very few texts tell us about the creation of colour: one group that has been little studied from this perspective relates to the preparation of food, for upper-class consumption. Much of the importance of elite cuisine was in display, for which colour was an essential. Recipe books instructed cooks how to colour dishes, to add verisimilitude to made dishes (e.g. meatballs, decorated with parsley to produce a green to mimic apples), or for use possibly in the creation of heraldic colours and designs, especially for 'subtelties', set pieces for table often with a political message. On the other hand, there may have been general cultural associations of certain colours with some culinary preparations. Some types of dish show common patterns of colouring: the use of green sauce, for example, for fish, and red for dishes known as 'Saracen'; another popular dish, of eels, was known as 'sore', literally just 'red'. Part of the popularity of some colourings, such as saffron or a gold colour generally, often combined with an egg glaze to provide lustre, may have been a beneficence that could be acquired by consuming objects of that colour or shine (just as items of virtue - jewels or stones - might be used in the cooking process). The employment of gold leaf in the preparation of some foodstuffs marked the ultimate in terms of consumption.

Culinary preparations cannot be divorced from the vessels or plates on which they were served or consumed. At the highest levels, precious metals were used for dishes, plates and saucers, and for utensils, all part of the culture of display. At a lower level, green sauce, for example, must have been readily available in the tavern, for use on pewter.

This paper will review the way that colour is employed in late medieval recipe books, in menus for feasts and other records of consumption. Colour in the foods of the past is a fleeting concept, but its use opens up ways of illuminating attitudes to chromaticism more generally and to associated material culture.