Articles of Interest

"Pennsylvania Gold"  The Mennonite Tradition of Growing Saffron - Saveur Magazine
The spice came to the U.S. during Colonial times along with other old-world crops like spelt. According to food historian William Woys Weaver, saffron-loving Pennsylvanians were once called Geeldeitsch, or “Yellow Dutch,” for the distinctive gold hue of their food. Merchants shipped Pennsylvania saffron to Spanish colonies in the Caribbean and, writes Pat Willard, author of Secrets of Saffron: The Vagabond Life of the World's Most Seductive Spice, in the years leading up to the Revolutionary War, saffron traded on the Philadelphia commodity exchange at a price equal to gold. In the colonies, saffron acted as a flavoring in soups and teas, as well as a domestic remedy for measles and fevers.
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