Heart to Hearth Cookery

After the pickle has been boiled for the receipt (recipe) To Pickle Eggs bruise some cochineal.  The red coloring was derived from the female scale (Dactylopius coccus or cochineal) which fed off the prickly pear cactus.  Both cochineal and prickly pear cactus were native to Mexico and South America.  After Spain’s conquests in the New World in the early 16th century, it had a monopoly on cochineal and thus very expensive in England.

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