I have always loved dessert. I ate plenty of mithai growing up. But the memory of one dish in particular has stayed with me for years: a bowl of pink-tinged payasam from a temple in Kerala.
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It was one of the most delicious payasams I had ever tasted. At the time, I didn’t know the dish’s flavour came from hours of stirring milk, rice, water and sugar over heat until they transformed into something rich and complex.
That payasam’s magic lay in two things: its luxurious texture, created by the long reduction of milk and the simmering of starches; and its unmistakable pink hue. Part of that colour came from the broken red rice used. But red rice is not the only path to pink payasam.
Another route involves pressure-cooking milk and sugar together. Under such conditions, a gentle caramelisation can add a brown hue so pale that, when mixed with milk, it can look a muted pink. The ratio of sugar to milk is vital here. The more sugar, the darker the hue. I use a quarter cup of sugar for every cup of milk.
After several years of experimenting with and writing about food, I have come to realise that playing with colour can be one of the most intriguing tricks to use in the kitchen.
Humans instinctively associate certain tints with specific flavours. Good cooks understand this. Food marketers do too. So, in a number of foods, what begins as a genuine indicator of quality is often strategically recreated.
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Take the dosa. A beautifully browned one instantly signals flavour (from the Maillard effect that turns most hot foods brown; see the story alongside for more on this). One sees the dosa and immediately pictures fluffy batter on a hot griddle, the drizzle of ghee, and the edges crisping up.
Shortcuts include adding naturally reddish-brown foods such as fenugreek seeds, chana dal or red rice to the traditional parboiled rice-and-urad dal mix for the batter. A small amount of sugar can also help, and that’s a hack I’ll admit I sometimes use at home.
Perfectly browned potatoes are often not perfectly browned either. That takes time, and just the right balance of low moisture, high heat and an alkaline environment. Instead, look closely at a number of social-media posts and one can see that a dark spice paste has been used to create the illusion of that delicious rough, crisp texture.
Most mass-manufactured cheddar cheese, meanwhile, has changed colour completely, as companies chased the perfect hue.
Match Outlook
It was the beta carotene in fresh grass that gave cow’s milk its mild orange-yellow, a pigment that passed into milk fat, producing naturally yellow butter and cheese. But, across most of the world, this was only possible in summer. The rest of the time, the cows ate grain and the pigment faded away. Meanwhile, buffaloes, goats and sheep convert beta carotene into colourless Vitamin A within their bodies. So, even grass-fed, their milk could only produce white butter and cheese.
To keep things consistent and affordable across seasons and species, manufacturers began adding natural dyes to cheddar cheese. Today, the deep orange tint from those ingredients, rather than the original pale yellow, has become part of cheddar’s identity.
Colour in food can be beautiful, and persuasive. Sometimes it reflects genuine craftsmanship. At other times, it carefully constructs the illusion of it.
My favourite hue hack in the kitchen? A tablespoon of canned tomato paste, to give my curries a rich colour. Fresh tomatoes tend to stay pinkish-red when cooked because they contain so much water. It takes quite a long time — and plenty of negotiation with the rest of the dish — for that water to evaporate and the lycopene to become concentrated enough to lead to a deeper red. A spoonful of paste delivers that long-cooked, rich red look and deep tomato flavour in minutes.
(Email Swetha Sivakumar on upgrademyfood@gmail. com. The views expressed are personal)
