The oil is sometimes used as a cooking oil; it is also used for moisturizing skin. Its primary use, however, is in the manufacture of paints, varnishes, and soaps.[citation needed]
Poppyseed oil is a drying oil. In oil painting, the most popular oil for binding pigment, thinning paint, and varnishing finished paintings is linseed oil.[citation needed]Walnut oil and poppyseed oil are also favored by oil painters, though each oil is used for a different purpose. Poppyseed oil is used especially in white paints.[3] Up through the late 19th century, when these oils became available prepared in tubes, painters tended to prepare them by hand.
While poppyseed oil does not leave the unwanted yellow tint for which linseed oil is known, it is much weaker in the test of time than the contemporary linseed oil.[citation needed] Poppyseed oil dries much more slowly (5–7 days) than linseed oil (3–5 days). For this reason poppyseed oil should not be used for a ground layer of a painting, and linseed oil should not be painted over a layer of poppyseed oil.
An early 20th century industry manual states that while the opium poppy was grown extensively in Eurasia, most of the world production of poppyseed oil occurred in France and Germany, from poppy seeds imported from other countries. From 1900 to 1911, France and Germany together produced on the order of 60,000,000 kilograms per year. At that time, poppyseed oil was used primarily to dress salads and frequently was adulterated with sesame oil and hazelnut oil to improve the taste of oil from stored (rancid) seeds. Poppyseed oil was used to adulterate olive oil and peach kernel oil.[3]
^National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine; Health and Medicine Division; Food and Nutrition Board; Committee to Review the Dietary Reference Intakes for Sodium and Potassium (2019). Oria, Maria; Harrison, Meghan; Stallings, Virginia A. (eds.). Dietary Reference Intakes for Sodium and Potassium. The National Academies Collection: Reports funded by National Institutes of Health. Washington, DC: National Academies Press (US). ISBN978-0-309-48834-1. PMID30844154. Archived from the original on 9 May 2024. Retrieved 21 June 2024.