Cream from Cow’s Milk
Today’s bland but pretty post features a bland but pretty color—and one which traces its roots back to the beginnings of agriculture! Cream is the color of, well… cream. If one milks a grazing animal (cow, goat, sheep, camel, mare, etc…) the milkfat will rise up to the top of the bucket. Cream from grazing animals takes on a lovely pale yellow color from carotenoid pigments which occur in the chloroplasts and chromoplasts of meadow plants. This effect is greatly attenuated in processed cream from factory-farmed milk, so, if you want the original effect as appreciated by Roman and Medieval colorists, you will have to wonder up to a green mountain pasture and milk the goats yourself as though you were Heidi (eds note: please, please do not wander around unfamiliar mountain pastures and grab at the teats of strange ruminants!).
A Cream-Colored Charolais Cow
Cream was a premium source of energy, nutrients, and sustenance throughout recorded history (and a costly ingredient in the foodstuffs of the rich and privileged for just as long). Cream shows up in Homer, the Bible, Roman pastoral poems, Scandinavian sagas, and Renaissance metaphysical poetry. Throughout all of these times, the word has been used as a description of the pale yellow/off-white color.
As a renter, I have a bitterness towards the color cream: rental flats are invariably painted cream because: 1) cream does not show dirt and age as much as white; 2) the bright color still makes rooms seem spacious and bright; and 3) you can always paint over it. Yet as an artist, I love cream color! It is perfect for vestal virgins, angel wings, and abandoned human skulls lying around dragon warrens! Cream is the highlight color of flesh seen in incandescent light and it forms the shadow side of clouds on perfectly bright sunny days. Even the oil-primed Belgian linen that painters like to paint on is cream-colored.
The Guardian Angel (Guercino, oil on canvas)
Because the color strikes such a note with humankind for aesthetic and historical reasons, a great many birds and animals have it in their Latin or common names. Thanks to the ancient ties between cream and luxuriant desserts, it also has a strange double life as an aristocratic color (which belies its use on the walls of rental garrets). As I keep writing, I realize how complex my feelings are about this beautiful pastel color….
The Cream-colored Woodpecker (Celeus flavus)
Don’t expect any resolution–you will have to figure out how you feel about the multitudinous meanings and associations of cream on your own!
ferrebeekeeper 
6 comments
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January 23, 2014 at 7:39 AM
Paul
And, “Cream” puts a name on classic rock music. What a versatile word!
January 23, 2014 at 1:40 PM
monarda
I completely agree about cream – and pale primrose (butter).
From Chapter 9 of “Jane Eyre” by Charlotte Bronte:
“April advanced to May: a bright serene May it was; days of blue sky, placid sunshine, and soft western or southern gales filled up its duration. And now vegetation matured with vigour; Lowood shook loose its tresses; it became all green, all flowery; its great elm, ash, and oak skeletons were restored to majestic life; woodland plants sprang up profusely in its recesses; unnumbered varieties of moss filled its hollows, and it made a strange ground-sunshine out of the wealth of its wild primrose plants: I have seen their pale gold gleam in overshadowed spots like scatterings of the sweetest lustre.”
January 23, 2014 at 3:44 PM
monarda
“A primrose by the river’s brim,
A yellow primrose was to him,
And it was nothing more”
–William Wordsworth,
Peter Bell, 1798
January 23, 2014 at 5:36 PM
Wayne
Thanks for the quotations, Monarda! I think I have one of those butter primroses–it is one of the only green plants in the garden right now…
January 23, 2014 at 10:47 PM
monarda
Oops, I should have said butter yellow, the flowers are a creamy butter yellow that is, I didn’t mean to say they were called butter but that their color is like butter, though of course that doesn’t do them justice — they have that tiny golden heart.
I also have some in my garden, but i find they have to be protected from slugs.
In England you see them everywhere. They are sweetly fragrant, too.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Primula_vulgaris
They come in other colors, but I like the pale yellow ones, in fact I like all pale yellow and cream colored flowers, especially in early spring.
February 28, 2014 at 7:32 PM
Neomys Sapiens
One of my most beloved authors, the German Arno Schmidt, wrote a novel called ‘Kaff oder Mare Crisium’ (Kaff: derogatory for a small town)
It consists of two nested stories, the outer of which describes an author vacationing with his girlfriend at the house of a relative in a small town in northern Germany (hence ‘Kaff’), while at the same time working on his story
This is a post-apocalyptic story set on the moon, where the enclaves of the two superpowers constitute the remaining humanity.
The protagonist of this ‘inner story’ is again a writer, set to the task of producing relevant and motivating stuff for the people of the American Lunar Settlement to read (or rather, to have read, as paper is a scarce commodity).
He produces a modernized version of the ‘Nibelungen’-Story, taking place in post-WWII-Germany, with all names americanized, such as ‘General Grunther’ instead of ‘King Gunther’.
While his work is to be culturally enlightening, he is also told by his superior, that he has to ‘spice up’ his stories, because the growth of the moonbase’s population is stagnant. So he does:
The names of the female protagonists appear as ‘Cream-hilled’ and ‘Brown-hilled’ instead of ‘Kriemhild’ and ‘Bruenhild’.