Brad and I have one major disagreement which has been consistent through our relationship. It has persisted even though we are both reasonable, rational people with good vocabularies and similar world-views. It has continued when approached empirically. It has even continued after our good friend, Tasha, polled her 5th grade class (who given their culinary habits are experts on this subject) and came back with a resolute answer. The disagreement: is macaroni and cheese orange, or is it yellow?
Image via Kraft Macaroni & Cheese (are you hungry yet?)
I’m not going to tell you which of us is on which side, because that would spoil the fun of having you weigh in in the comments. But it has proven to be an intractable problem for us.
However, it does provide an excellent hook for me to talk about a subject that I find really fascinating: how people perceive and talk about colors.
This issue has flared up in the public consciousness time and again, recently through the dress incident earlier this year. (I saw white/gold, Sage saw blue/black, in case you’re wondering.) I thought it would be fun to share a little about a book I read, recommended by my Dad, Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages (affiliate link – read our policies) by Guy Deutscher.
I read most of this on the train home in the evenings after a full day of work, usually exhausted and ready to veg out. Still, this book on linguistics was enthralling, mostly because of the author’s obvious enjoyment in regaling you with tales of the wild characters who studied this obscure branch of academia.
The book wasn’t entirely about color and language – instead, it was about language and the various ways that it does or does not impact culture and perception. But, while the book as a whole is an extraordinarily fun read, let me spare you the book report and instead share a bit of what I learned in the part that focused on color, which was most interesting to me as someone who is interested in writing and thinking about aesthetics.
Guy Deutscher opens by explaining how words for different colors developed in languages over time. Did you know that the language in which Homer wrote the Odyssey and the Iliad had very few descriptors for color? Further, those words that it did use grouped things together that we would consider very different colors today – honey the same color as leaves, the “wine-dark sea.” Also, in a narrative with beautiful descriptions, there was no mention of the color of the sky!
“Wine Dark Sea” (this beautiful photo is “Moody Purple Sunset” by EclecticForest on Etsy) (affiliate link – read about our policies)
This led some people to believe that humans actually evolved the ability to see color during recorded history, but this was not the case. Instead, languages developed these words over time. Even more interestingly, according to this book, words for color developed very predictably in each language – starting with a light/dark division, then adding the color red, then usually yellow, then green, and then finally blue.
This might seem absurd to us now, but think about it this way: if the only time you ever see yellow is in a particular flower, why would you need a word for it? Why don’t you just say “it is light like a daffodil?” And why do you need a word for blue, if you can say that something is “dark like the ocean at dusk,” and everyone knows what you mean?
Maybe that seems EVEN MORE ABSURD, so Guy offers up a thought experiment to help us see the other side of things. He asks us to imagine the future, when humans have finally created something like that food replicator from Star Trek, and can create any food we want from nowhere. But he imagines it a world even stranger:
It is by no means limited to the few “legacy fruits” that were available in the early twenty-first century. The machine can create thousands of different fruits by manipulating the taste and consistency on many different axes, such as firmness, juiciness, creaminess, airiness, sliminess, sweetness, tanginess, and many others that we don’t have precise words to describe. Press a button, and you’ll get a fruit that’s a bit like an avocado in its oily consistency, but with a taste halfway between a carrot and a mango.
Guy then asks us to imagine that an anthropologist comes to study a people much like us with a tray of 1,024 little fruit taste samples, and asks us to try them and tell us what that flavor is called, and “is astonished by the abject poverty of our fructiferous vocabulary.” Our abstract taste concepts, like “sweet” and “bitter,” are terribly crude when faced with all of these new, unnatural options.
For a while you struggle to remember, then it dawns on you that this taste is slightly similar to those wild strawberries you had in a Parisian restaurant once, only this taste seems ten times more pronounced and is blended with a few other things you can’t identify. So finally you say, very hesitantly, that “it’s a bit like wild strawberries.” … Doesn’t it feel odd and limiting, she asks, not to have a precise vocabulary to describe tastes in the region of wild strawberry? You tell her that the only things “in the region of wild strawberry” that you’ve ever tasted before were wild strawberries.
Okay, Naomi, that’s all very interesting, but what does this have to do with decorating?
Well, it doesn’t really, but I think about it a lot as I peruse paint decks and all those names we’ve invented for the colors we’ve found. We now live in a world where we manipulate color with all the mastery of our food-and-taste-replicating future selves. We ACTUALLY have access to that tray of fruit samples, only for color. This is one of the first times in history that we have needed such an intense and precise color vocabulary – and it is entirely cultural and pretty amazing.
By Doghouse Diaries, updated to be less gendered more accurate by Plaster & Disaster
Those in the “Emily Henderson Culture” have truly immense vocabularies dedicated to discussing gray (and Ryan Gossling). Those who were YHL fans understand the importance, and danger, of grellow. Also, I am going to bet that for 95% of the people reading this, I don’t need to add any additional description for you to know just what color Revere Pewter is. (And are you as sick of it as I am?)
But what is really interesting about this book is that Guy Deutscher pushes us to think about how the words we use influence the way we think. In the end, in my opinion, the influence he finds is pretty minor. But this is really a book in which the stories and the new ways of thinking are rewarding enough.
However, when you think about it, our language for color definitely influences how we perceive colors. I doubt marsala would be the color of the year if it had the name of it’s close cousin, puce. And paint companies surely believe this is a big deal, given all the effort put into finding pleasing, evocative, association-inducing names for every shade in every paint deck.
I haven’t even scratched the surface of how much interesting stuff there is out there about this very broad topic. If you found this post interesting, rather than profoundly boring, you should totally check out Through the Language Glass (affiliate link – read our policies) and/or a few of my favorite links on related subjects:
- Ridiculous paint color names – Buzzfeed
- The color pink doesn’t exist?! – Today I Found Out
- Color survey results – xkcd (who also adapted the Doghouse Diaries comic, with a much stronger scientific basis)
- When boys wore pink – Smithsonian
- More about the wine-dark sea – Clarkesworld
So, now that you know how much cultural weight is behind the question: do you think Macaroni and Cheese is orange or yellow?
(Sharing at Create Link Inspire, Totally Terrific Tuesday, Two Uses Tuesday, Create It Thursday, and Tip Me Tuesday)
I’m gonna say yellow because orange is the color of an orange and mac/cheese isn’t that. Though the dry cheese is orange-y before you dilute it with milk & butter, making the resulting mix YELLOW.
Thanks for your vote! The difference between “light orange” and “yellow” is where it gets so tricky, I think.
From your list and pics of color names, clearly mac and cheese is canteloupe. Thank goodness it isn’t, though, because one of those is yummy and one is vile (I’ll let you guess which is which).
Seriously, the color of Mac and cheese is “cheddar.”
Oh, now I’m wondering which one is vile! I’m going to guess cantaloupe, since mac and cheese is one of the most delicious things known to man.
On the color question for mac and cheese. You are both correct. Usually home made(meaning yo grade the cheese and heat the milk, etc) mac and cheese is lighter in color or yellow. The boxed mac and cheese is definitely more orange.
Thanks, Judy! (Now I really want to go make some home made mac and cheese….)
Yellow!!
Thanks, Deanna!
I’ll say traditional Kraft boxed mac & cheese is orange. Homemade skews a bit more towards the yellow side though I think it tastes better if made with orange cheddar cheese (and yes, I know the color of the cheese doesn’t change the taste).
Thanks, Harper! Color totally changes the taste, I agree… it’s part of the whole experience 🙂
According to Crayola, the crayon colored Macaroni and Cheese is in the orange hue family (http://www.crayola.com/explore-colors/macaroni–cheese.aspx).
Thanks, Kathie – good call to ask the experts!
My mother’s homemade was nearly white, or maybe beige. Except for the lightly browned cheese and breadcrumbs on the top which were slightly crispy and always fought over. Most homemade these days is yellow. Kraft-in-the-box is definitely orange.
Oh, that sounds so good!!! It is clearly dinner time here… Thanks!
As already stated: Yellow if it’s homemade, orange if it’s from a box. But I guess the box is about to get less-orange: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/04/21/kraft-mac-cheese-just-got-duller-you-can-thank-or-blame-the-food-babe/
Thanks, Jenny! I had no idea!
Orange, duh! 😉
I loved this! And the guy/girl color chart was hilarious!
Here from TUT.
Thanks, Melinda – glad you liked it!
So, I’m hearing a pretty strong indication here from most folks that the kind in the Kraft box is ORANGE. Just saying.
I’m not sure I’m seeing the same consensus that you’re seeing.
orange. definitely. And I could see the dress BOTH ways, which, I have to admit, made me feel like I’m probably a better person than people who could only see it one way ;). also, I have that book! But I haven’t read it yet. Just sitting there on my too easy to impulse buy for kindle. and the experiment he did with his daughter and the sky being blue? Dave made us do that with Abe. We carefully avoided reading certain pages of books, skipped songs on CDs, etc, until he knew all his colors, then asked him the big question. He glanced up at the sky, said “blue” very casually, and that was that. oh well. My toddler is smarter than the ancients, I guess.
Good job, Abe! It sounds like your entire family is blessed with super-natural color sense.
That’s awesome that you have the book! I totally recommend picking it up – I didn’t plan on enjoying it nearly as much as I did. His writing is so fun that it really makes the pages fly.
I’d’ve rearranged that color chart. I’d’ve put the salmon in the orange category rather than the pink. I would’ve moved the magenta up by the purples, but still in the pink category. I’d’ve put the teal next to the greens. I’d’ve called the “eggplant” or the “grape” – “violet”. And I’d’ve put the maroon in the reds.
As for the mac & cheese, just put it on my plate and leave me alone! Its orange the way my roomie makes it, she doesn’t add milk.
Another vote for orange!
Very interesting on the color chart. I never would have thought of salmon as orange, but I guess it is right on the line! Thanks for sharing 🙂
I’d like to weigh in from two perspectives: 1) as a philosophy major, I took a courses in philosophy of perception; and 2) as the daughter of an artist and an artist myself, I’ve been thinking about the variations in color for longer than there has been a blogosphere.
1) Studies show that people identify different wavelengths of light as the pure representations of each named color. Our perceptions are not identical. What you see probably doesn’t match what I see or what your husband sees, therefor, we will all draw the line of demarcation (if one exists) at different points. The color of mac and cheese is dancing around the line between yellow and orange, but the truth is that the transition between colors is smooth – there is no physical demarcation point that sets one group of wavelengths apart from another, so the parameters we set are purely personal.
2) As an artist, I would be using both yellows to depict the highlights and oranges to depict the low-lights to capture the coloration of the pile of mac and cheese. I don’t believe either is a more correct color to use as both are needed.
Additionally, my mother and I used to play games discussing how one would mix up a particular color. It was all based on the standard set of watercolor pigments she used that can be combined to make any color. We might discuss whether you would use alizarin crimson or cadmium red to make that orange, whether the shadows in a certain area were warm or cool, etc. There’s a lot more to know about color than even interiors bloggers could ever guess! (If you’re curious, the optimum palette of pigments according to at least one professional watercolorist includes: burnt umber, raw umber, burnt sienna, ochre, lemon yellow, cadmium yellow, cadmium red, alizarin crimson, cerulean blue, cobalt blue, and ultramarine blue.)
Thanks, Gaidig! What great insight. I think you’d really enjoy this book, given your dual perspectives. It is all about how the current lines of demarcation that we use were drawn over time by different cultures. But what is super interesting is that even though there is no physical demarcation between the wavelengths, different cultures throughout history did in fact come to very similar definitions of the colors, and did come to define them in the same order, as well. So maybe it is in the middle between purely personal and driven by outside forces?
Love your thoughts on mixing colors, and what you would use for the light and dark portions of mac and cheese. Can you recommend any accessible readings for laymen on mixing colors? It would be fun to get into, and I bet would be very informative for interior design.
If that is the colour of your Mac ‘n cheese you must be using a mix. I make it using a cheese sauce and it doesn’t look orange, which I would describe yours as looking. Mine’s pale and creamy looking. I have never seen a grape like the shade you suggest on the chart either. In fact I can’t relate to most of the names on the chart. Interesting read though.
Thanks, Flora! Yeah, the chart isn’t super accurate (mostly its for fun). Your mac n cheese sounds delicious, and I’m glad you agree that mine is orange! 🙂