Interesting tidbits from Fran Gage’s book “Bread and Chocolate“:

In American colonial times, sugar was not as refined as nowadays and contained impurities. Cooks who needed a pure sugar would boil it with water and skim it, then mix it with egg whites which attached to other unwanted bits in it. I remember seeing a tan-colored cone of sugar during my grade school visits to historical houses.

Although what we know as “the baking potato” is always a Russet Burbank, the potatoes sold as “red” and “white” have many possible varieties. Gage called her major supermarket’s PR firm and they had to investigate before they sent her a list of the ones they had sold under those color labels.

There are three varieties of blood orange: Moro, Tarocco, and Sanguinelli. Gage liked the Moro the best.