Turning White Wine to Red

Here is a intriguing little trick that I just discovered as I was reading through an English translation of Le Menagier de Paris, which is a medieval manuscript dated to circa 1393.

This is a little recipe for turning white wine to red wine at the dinner table. I presume it was meant to have been a sort of parlor trick with which to entertain dinner guests? I posted about this trick on my new cookbook blog, but I wanted to make note of it here as well since I find it so very fascinating.

Here's the recipe as given in Le Menagier de Paris:

TO MAKE WHITE WINE RED AT THE TABLE Take in summer the red flowers which grow in the wheat, called rose-mallow and other names, and let them dry until they crumble into powder, and secretly drop them in the glass with the wine, and it will turn red.