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Written by tom
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Sunday, 22 June 2008 |
One of the chief food colors. It is a salmon-colored dye made from the pulp of the seeds of the tree Bixa orellana of the West Indies and tropical America and Africa. It contains bixin, C25H3004, a dark-red crystalline carotenoid carboxylic acid, and also bixol, C18H30O, a dark-green oily alcohol. It is more stable than carotene and has more coloring power. Annatto is sometimes called bixine, and in West Africa it is called rocou. It is soluble in oils and in alcohol. Annatto paste is used as a food color especially for butter, cheese, and margarine, but has a tendency to give a slightly mustardy flavor unless purified. It is also used as a stain for wood and silk. Water-soluble colors are made by alkaline extraction, giving orange to red shades. For coloring margarine yellow a blend of annatto and turmeric may be used. Anattene, of S. B. Penick & Co., is a microcrystalline powder produced from annatto, giving a range of colors from light yellow to deep orange. It comes either oil-soluble or water-soluble.
A substitute for annatto for coloring butter and margarine, having the advantage that it is rich in vitamin A, is carrot oil obtained from the common carrot. The concentrated oil has a golden-yellow color and is odorless and tasteless. Carex is a name for carrot oil in cottonseed oil solution used for coloring foods. Many of the fat-soluble coloring matters found in plant and animal products are terpenes that derive their colors from conjugated double bonds in the molecule. The yellow carotene of carrots and the red lycopene of tomatoes both have the formula C40H56, and are tetra terpenes containing 8 isoprene units but with different molecular structures. Beta carotene, produced synthetically from acetone by Hoffmann-La Roche, is identical with the natural food color.
A beautiful water-soluble yellow dye used to color foods and medicines is saffron, extracted from the dried flowers and tips of the saffron crocus, Crocus sativas, of Europe, India, and China. It is expensive, as about 4,000 flowers are required to supply an ounce of the dye. Saffron contains crocin, C44H70028, a bright-red powder soluble in alcohol. Both red and yellow colors are obtained from the orange thistlelike heads of the safflower, which are dried and pressed into cakes. |
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Last Updated ( Sunday, 22 June 2008 )
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