16th century uses of orange juice

[akashiver]

I had mentioned a bunch of posts I wanted to do. This is one of them, albeit one that has shrunk to a miniscule size.

Random factoid for those (like me) who read books like Philipa Gregory's The Other Queen and think things like, "It's all very well to *tell* me Mary Stuart received secret messages from Catholic spies, but how exactly was that done?"

My fun research factoid from last week was: orange juice. Those dastardly secretive English Jesuits used orange juice as ink in their letters. When in prison etc., they used orange pips + rinds to make rosaries, and would send innocent looking rosaries to their friends wrapped in a piece of paper that - you guessed it - had been written on in orange juice. OJ can be used as invisible ink - invisible when it dries, but wet it, or put it close to a flame, and the words show through.

So why did they use orange juice and not equally invisible lemon juice?

Answer: because when you wet/heat lemon juice, the letters apparently fade again once it dries/cools down. On an oj note, the words stay visible, so you can tell whether your captors intercepted the note.

Oh, those crafty Jesuits.

BTW that Gregory book? A disappointment. Go read The Boleyn Inheritance instead. It's the best thing she's written.

Comments

[ninja-turbo.livejournal.com]

I remember hearing about the orange juice thing sometime before, but it doesn't stop being cool. :)

[kendokamel.livejournal.com]

I used to use OJ to write secret messages when I was a kid, because we didn't always have lemon juice. I didn't know the trick about it staying visible, though!

[squishymeister.livejournal.com]

that is awesome! I must try it...