Mondo Knows Facts
Annatto gives cheddar its orange colour
The seed coat of a tropical shrub supplies a yellow red dye called bixin Annatto comes from the waxy red seeds of Bixa orellana, a shrub native to tropical America, and its pigment bixin dissolves in fat. Cheesemakers in Britain began adding it so that summer milk, rich in carotene, and winter milk would produce a consistent coloured cheddar. The dye is also used in butter, margarine and some rice dishes. It sits in Mondo's food collection, one of 200 facts that each trace back to the reference below.
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Facts that can change over time are reviewed and updated. If something here looks wrong, Mondo would rather know than be confidently incorrect.
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Tags: annatto, pigment, cheese
Annatto gives cheddar its orange colour: the short answers
- Where does this come from, and can I check it?
- The seed coat of a tropical shrub supplies a yellow red dye called bixin. The figure is taken from Smithsonian Institution, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
- Is this really a food fact?
- Yes. It sits on the Food shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
- What else can I read about it?
- The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.