Color Me Onion

© Nicolas G. Mertens / Wikimedia Commons / CC-BY-SA-4.0

Nothing says “Easter” quite like a large basket of richly colored . . . onions. Before the invention of fizzing synthetic dye tablets, Christian communities relied on natural sources of pigment to color their eggs. Throughout Central and Eastern Europe this often required bushels of onion skins.

In addition to making people cry and ruining people’s breath, the onion (Allium cepa L.) has a long history as a natural source of yellow dye. The anthocyanin pigments in onion skin have been dying fabrics yellow/gold since Ancient Persia, through the Middle Ages and into the Modern Age. For example, khaki colored clothes produced after WWII once owed their recognizable hue to onion skins.

So when European Christians wanted to color their Easter eggs rich golds and sunny yellows, they turned to their cellars and retrieved as may dry, crinkling onion skins as possible. Eggs were wrapped in onion skins, which were then tied  on securely by wool thread, and boiled to produce a beautiful mottled golden color. In Great Britain these eggs are called “paste-eggs,” “paste” being derived from “pace” or “paschal.” Flowers and leaves could be pressed against the eggs as they boiled to produce floral patterns from which the dye was excluded. In other countries, designs were scratched into dyed eggs with a sharp tool or else drawn on beforehand with beeswax.
This surprisingly simple method produces beautiful results and is worth a try. If you’d like to put your onion skins to good use this Easter, I redirect you to this Food Network article.

If you want to experiment with other natural egg dyes, why not give beets, turmeric powder, chili powder, red cabbage or blueberries a try. You may discover that your kitchen is more colorful than you imagined.

Brian Rutter, PhD, is the cofounder of Thing in a Pot Productions and a postdoctoral researcher in plant biology at Indiana University. Subscribe to our newsletter to receive our “Things About Things – Odd Facts About Plants” and video production tips in your inbox every month!

Works Cited:

Bae, S.-E. (2009) A Study of Onion Pigments in the Extracting Solvents and Residual Pigments after Dyeing the Textiles. Journal of Fashion Business, 13(3), 109-117.

Newall, V. (1967) Easter Eggs. The Journal of American Folklore, 80(315): 3-32.