Reviewed by:

• A Rainbow Palate: How Chemical Dyes Changed the West's Relationship to Food by Carolyn Cobbold
• Peter Thompson (bio)

A Rainbow Palate: How Chemical Dyes Changed the West's Relationship to Food By Carolyn Cobbold. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2020. Pp. vii + 282.

At its broadest level, Carolyn Cobbold's new book, A Rainbow Palate, reminds the reader that the vibrant colors associated with many contemporary foods are produced by chemical dyes. These colors have a distinct history tied to both the expansion of industrialized chemistry in the nineteenth century and the continued consumption of mass-produced food. Thus, A Rainbow Palate fits into a growing body of literature that attempts to bridge the history of modern chemistry to that of food consumption. Other recent texts making a similar effort include: Benjamin Cohen, Pure Adulteration (University of Chicago Press, 2020; Ai Hisano, Visualizing Taste (Harvard University Press, 2019); E. C. Spary, Eating the Enlightenment (University of Chicago Press, 2012); E. C. Spary, Feeding France (Cambridge University Press, 2014); and Heiko Stoff, Gift in der Nahrung (Franz Steiner Verlag, 2015).

Since the large-scale industrialization of food production, arguably beginning in earnest in the nineteenth century and accelerating exponentially in the twentieth, questions surrounding the origins, methods of cultivation, and composition of our food have become commonplace. Indeed, Cobbold employs contemporary distrust of so-called "processed food" in order to create the stakes for her late nineteenth-century story, in which synthetic dyes were first introduced into food production, and then debated and legislated. In doing so, her book attempts to accomplish two major tasks. First, it pushes the insights of many historians of science into an earlier period, arguing that the fuzzy demarcation between modern scientific experts and socially-embedded or politically-motivated actors has a history that predates the twentieth century. Secondly, the book narrates social and political responses to the inclusion of dyes in foodstuffs, attempting to draw out some of the earliest arguments that surrounded the purity of food in a moment when daily life appeared increasingly permeated by often unknown and undetectable chemical substances.

Cobbold's distinctive contributions to this scholarship become apparent from her deep research into the history of coal tar dyes, revealing the ways in which a profit-driven commitment to the discovery of new synthetic chemicals and their corresponding consumer markets encouraged the inclusion of textile dyes in food (chs. 3–4). This was part of a larger trend during the late nineteenth-century explosion of European industrial [End Page 642] chemistry, in which the search for new synthetic chemicals quickly out-paced analytic work. The lack of substantial analysis and testing of these new chemicals meant that chemists struggled to understand the physiological effects of their ever-expanding range of products.

Here, A Rainbow Palate will prove most interesting and useful to historians of technology. Following the insights of historian Ursula Klein, Cobbold takes seriously the idea that developments in science cannot be separated from their instrumentation; and while the book does not provide a deep dive into the chemist's toolkit, it does tie the materials involved in stains, in vitro experiments, and animal testing into the web of technologies—both material and epistemic—necessary for the socially constructed search for scientific consensus. Unfortunately for nineteenth century chemists, such a scientific consensus was never reached on the toxicity of synthetic dyes in food. The dyes were used in such trace amounts that detecting them and isolating their health impact remained exceedingly difficult and highly dependent on predetermined understandings of toxicity.

The lack of experimental standards was compounded by the political motivations of the chemists themselves, with newly appointed public analysts attempting to secure professional status by revealing the toxicity of dyes produced by industrial/academic chemists and peddled by food manufacturers. Cobbold subsequently covers the British, French, German, and American legislation of food dyes in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This comparative approach is quite justified given that each nation's story reveals unique social and political commitments in an...

审核人：

• 彩虹味：化学染料如何改变西方与食物的关系Carolyn Cobbold
• 彼得·汤普森（生物）

彩虹味觉：化学染料如何改变西方与食物的关系Carolyn Cobbold。芝加哥：芝加哥大学出版社，2020 年。Pp。七 + 282。

在最广泛的层面上，Carolyn Cobbold 的新书A Rainbow Palate提醒读者，与许多现代食物相关的鲜艳色彩是由化学染料产生的。这些颜色有着独特的历史，与 19 世纪工业化化学的扩张和大规模生产食品的持续消费有关。因此，《彩虹味觉》适合越来越多的文学作品，这些文学作品试图将现代化学史与食品消费史联系起来。最近做出类似努力的其他文本包括：Benjamin Cohen，Pure Adulteration（芝加哥大学出版社，2020 年；Ai Hisano，Visualizing Taste（哈佛大学出版社，2019 年）；EC Spary，Eating the Enlightenment（芝加哥大学出版社，2012 年）；EC Spary，《喂养法国》（剑桥大学出版社，2014 年）；和 Heiko Stoff，《德国的礼物》（Franz Steiner Verlag，2015 年）。

自从食品生产大规模工业化以来，可以说是从 19 世纪真正开始并在 20 世纪成倍加速，围绕我们食物的起源、种植方法和成分的问题变得司空见惯。事实上，科博尔德利用当代对所谓“加工食品”的不信任来为她 19 世纪后期的故事创造利害关系，在这个故事中，合成染料首先被引入食品生产，然后进行辩论和立法。为此，她的书试图完成两项主要任务。首先，它将许多科学史家的见解推向更早的时期，认为现代科学专家与社会嵌入或政治动机行为者之间的模糊界限的历史早于 20 世纪。

Cobbold 对该奖学金的独特贡献从她对煤焦油染料历史的深入研究中可见一斑，揭示了以利润为导向的承诺发现新的合成化学品及其相应的消费市场鼓励将纺织染料纳入食品的方式（第 3-4 章）。这是 19 世纪后期欧洲工业[End Page 642]化学爆炸式发展期间更大趋势的一部分，在该趋势中，对新合成化学品的搜索迅速超过了分析工作。由于缺乏对这些新化学品的大量分析和测试，化学家们难以理解其不断扩大的产品范围的生理影响。

在这里，彩虹味将证明对技术史学家来说是最有趣和最有用的。遵循历史学家乌苏拉·克莱因 (Ursula Klein) 的见解，科博德认真地认为科学的发展不能与其仪器分开。虽然这本书没有深入探讨化学家的工具包，但它确实将染色、体外实验和动物试验中涉及的材料与技术网络联系起来——材料和认识论——对于社会建构的科学探索是必要的共识。不幸的是，对于 19 世纪的化学家来说，从未就食物中合成染料的毒性达成这样的科学共识。这些染料的使用量如此之低，以至于检测它们并隔离它们对健康的影响仍然非常困难，并且高度依赖于对毒性的预先了解。

化学家本身的政治动机加剧了实验标准的缺乏，新任命的公共分析师试图通过揭示工业/学术化学家生产并由食品制造商兜售的染料的毒性来确保专业地位。Cobbold 随后涵盖了 19 世纪末和 20 世纪初英国、法国、德国和美国的食用染料立法。考虑到每个国家的故事都揭示了一个……的独特社会和政治承诺，这种比较方法是非常合理的。