The medieval dish of eels known as blaundsore seems to have a name that literally means white from red. The name of the dish goes back to that of an earlier dish, sorre, made by chopping up eels, seasoning them, and then adding powdered sandalwood to dye the food a reddish-brown. It was this dye that gave the dish its name: sorre derives from the French sorer, meaning to redden, the source also of sorrel, a reddish-brown colour often used to describe horses. Once established as a dish, sorre inspired a new eel dish, one which the French called blanch-de-sore, meaning white from red (the white in the dish’s name likely refers to the addition of milk or cream to the original sorre recipe). In the early fifteenth century, the English adopted the dish and its French name, but corrupted it in the process to blaundsore.