Blue Raspberry

We all know that blue is not a natural color for food. The exception that proves the rule is blueberries, which have a delicate flavor that belies their dramatic color and doesn't factor into junk food much at all. When we see blue candy or blue syrup, that's coded in our heads as raspberry flavor. Or more specifically, artificial raspberry flavor, which is actually pretty good even when it falls short of the real thing. Yeah, yeah, raspberries are red, except when they are black, or white, so how did that flavor become blue? I thought it was just an assignment because red was already in use for cherry flavoring, but it's a lot more complicated than that. Tom Blank of Weird History Food is glad to share the story of blue raspberry flavoring with us.