I did not say, or mean to imply that you were wrong Denise. Perhaps grannyspantry.com is FOS - it's not the kind of website that I would trust for technical data.
Did McCormick tell you what the ingredients of the Canadian products? They are quite often different - allowed food colourants are not the same in every country.
I agree that there is a plethora of false, misleading, incomplete, and sometimes dangerous information on the internet. Even many of the formulae and methodology for emulsion available on the internet fall under that banner.
Nor did I say or imply that emulsion making is difficult.
Suggesting that people read a label to ensure that they are using the correct ingredient is not 'complicated'.
Franky, anybody who doesn't read the fine print deserves to have a failed emulsion - having to pour silver down the drain is a firm teacher.
The biggest variable in making an emulsion is technique and accuracy. Kitchen-sink emulsions can indeed yield a nice looking image. Applying precision and controls to the exact same formulation can yield an
excellent emulsion.
"Why" comes to my mind when you suggest that I'm trying to dissuade people from trying there hand at emulsion make. I do no such thing.
Personally, I seek to create fine-grain, fast, fog-free, stable and repeatable emulsions - that is my goal, and to do so has required precision work.
Boring old "AJ-12" can be boosted up to and likely beyond ISO 50, but to do so requires technical skills, and equipment that is not likely to be found in a kitchen store.
http://www.btps.ca/files/PDF/MSDS/red_food_color.pdf
In addition to personal telephone confirmation by the lab folks at McCormick.
If by "depending on where you look" you mean random internet crap, yes, I'm sure you can find anything. Here's a lovely site that is case in point:
http://grannyspantry.blogspot.com/2012/01/food-colouring.html
The numbers 3 and 40 are flipped even though the hyperlinked reference is correct.
I'm sure I couldn't say the sun rises in the east without you saying I'm wrong, Ian. "Why" is a mystery to me. Regardless, I'd hate to have people use McC red and fail to get an ortho emulsion. That just feeds the myth that making emulsions is too hard/random/unsatisfactory/expensive to even try.
(Just kidding - it would be too dilute to work well.)
