Anyone fancy a quick food chemistry experiment to do whilst cooking dinner?
According to an old wives tale the best way to get rid of garlic smells on your hands is to rub them on stainless steel. You can even buy stainless steel ‘soap’ for that very purpose. This came up on twitter, the other day, and there was some speculation on the chemistry behind the phenomenon.
@suziesheehy Good question! From memory, garlic odour comes from allyl methyl sulfides. Presumably the sulfide part reacts with a component
— Dr Suze Kundu (@FunSizeSuze) October 15, 2013
But before we get to the ‘how’ question maybe we should figure our if there is any truth in the anecdotes. Now for the experiment? Once your done please report results via the link at the bottom of the page.
Materials
A clove of garlic.
A knife.
A timer.
A wooden spoon and a stainless steel table spoon of about the same size.
Methods
1. Wash and dry your hands.
2. Cut the clove of garlic in half (don’t peel it, that way your fingers won’t pick up garlic smells when you hold it).
3. Rub the freshly cut surface on the palm of one hand for 10 seconds.
4. Rub the second piece of garlic on the palm of your other hand for 10 seconds (so ensuring an equally fresh and identical sized piece is used on each hand).
5. Rub one palm with the back of the stainless steel spoon and the other palm with the wooden spoon. Again for 10 seconds each. Make sure you remember which hand was rubbed with which spoon.
6.. Find a willing volunteer, ask them to close their eyes.
7. Hold a hand under their chin (thus keeping each hand the same distance from the test subjects nose) and ask them to smell it. Then do the same with the other hand.
8. Ask them which hand smelt stronger of garlic.
Conclusions
I’ll get back to you with a conclusion when enough results are in. Then we can start working on whatever chemistry involved.
Originally posted at www.t2ah.com
2 comments
1 ping
Mark
October 30, 2013 at 4:26 am (UTC -8) Link to this comment
Interesting comment from Oliva Lenz over at http://www.t2ah.com
Edleia Santiago
May 20, 2016 at 8:50 am (UTC -8) Link to this comment
I learned this trick almost 30 years ago. But I noticed that the not every stainless steel spoon is created equal. Apparently the older the spoon, the better. My theory is not necessarily because the age, but because of the process to create the the stainless steel. The older the spoon, the darker it is. Not as shiny. It appears that the brilliance of the spoon takes away from the performance. Although I’m a chem tech, I have never studied the mechanism behind this, but somehow, I thought It was ionic.
So, the reason it does not work for some people, is because of the quality of the object. And by the way, a knife is the worse object. No safe to begin with, and not anatomical. A spoon can be passed between your pink and ring fingers, with the bowled side out (cupped side toward your palm). Rub your fingers, and palm against the spoon. It does work.
One weird way to choose a spoon is to taste. Put the spoon in your mouth, cup down towards your tongue. The stronger the “metallic” flavor, the better. NOT an old wife’s tale. Only as said before, not too many good studies have been done seriously on this issue.
Garlic Challenge, the results show! » Chemistry Blog
December 31, 2013 at 4:57 am (UTC -8) Link to this comment
[…] Back in October I posed a question: Is there any truth in the old wives tale that rubbing your hands on stainless steel gets rid of garlic smells? Various theories as to how steel may achieve this were posited. But I wanted to know if there was a real effect in the first place. Kitchen chemists everywhere helped answer this by taking part in a stinky citizen science challenge. And the results are, well, interesting. […]