Bixin
Also written annatto pigment, norbixin, E160b
Quick answer
The orange-red carotenoid of annatto, and one of the oldest food colourants still in industrial use — the reason a cheddar is orange and a Yucatecan pork is brick red.
What it does
Bixin is a colouring compound with almost no flavour of its own, which is the whole point of annatto and the thing that separates it from every other red or yellow spice in this catalogue. Saffron colours and tastes; paprika colours and tastes; turmeric colours and is bitter. Annatto colours and does very little else, carrying only a faint peppery earthiness — so it is the spice reached for when a dish needs to look a particular way and taste unchanged. That is also why it is the colourant of choice in industrial cheese, butter and smoked fish, where any flavour contribution would be a defect.
How it behaves when cooked
Four properties of the molecule, and what they mean at the stove.
- Volatility
- low
- Fat solubility
- high
- Water solubility
- low
- Heat stability
- moderate
Fat-soluble and not volatile, which dictates the technique: annatto seeds are bloomed in hot oil or lard and the seeds discarded, because the colour will not come out into water. A cook who stirs annatto into a watery braise gets specks rather than colour. The industrial form solves this by saponifying bixin into norbixin, which is water-soluble and is what colours cheese — the same pigment in two forms with opposite solubility, and a good demonstration that "what does it dissolve in" is a more useful question about a spice than "what does it taste of". Bixin fades under prolonged light and high heat, which is why annatto-coloured products are packed opaque.
Spices that carry it
Recorded on the compound rather than on each spice, so the two cannot disagree.
- AnnattoPrincipal component
Essentially the entire reason the spice is used. Annatto is a colourant that happens to be a seed.
Not to be confused with
Compounds a reader is likely to take for this one, and why they differ.
Curcumin
The other great fat-soluble spice colourant, and the comparison that makes both worth having: curcumin is yellow and distinctly bitter, bixin is orange-red and nearly tasteless. A dish that needs colour without flavour wants annatto; one where a little earthiness is welcome can take turmeric.
Carthamin — the safflower pigment
Safflower and annatto are used interchangeably as cheap colourants and are chemically unrelated: safflower carries its own carotenoids and quinone pigments, not bixin. An earlier draft of this record listed safflower as an occurrence, which the bidirectional integrity check refused — correctly, since the note under it said the opposite.
Crocin — the saffron pigment
Water-soluble where bixin is fat-soluble, which is why saffron is steeped in liquid and annatto is bloomed in oil. Substituting one for the other fails on technique before it fails on flavour.
Questions this page answers
- what is bixin
- what is annatto colouring
- what is e160b
- what makes annatto orange
- is annatto a natural colouring