It may seem a bit silly to create a thread to comment on one of Cecil’s classics from 1983, but it was included in the latest weekly email and other readers may have clicked on the link to read the rest of the story, since hot and spicy food still abounds on the taste buds of many people. And I can attest that the last comment online is absolutely correct: salt is the best antidote. But no explanation was given, so I thought if I provided one here, it would be all the more plausible.
Why is salt so effective? Chemistry. How so? The hot part - the chemical - in chillis that causes the agony is powerfully acidic, and so it burns just like any other strong acid. Salt, on the other hand, is strongly alkaline and neutralises the acidity of the chilli. Think of the Thai and other asian people, who love chillis more than most, but who flood their food with very salty fish and soy sauce.:eek:
Nor is capsaicin acidic. It’s alkaline. Milk works well because it’s acidic and neutralizes it. I’ve never used salt, but I find a shot of vodka works well since it’s an organic solvent.
Nevermind. I see Mangetout said this in his edit. I must’ve just read over it in his post.
Is there a link to this story? I searched under “chili” and “chilli” and even did a search on capsaicin, but couldn’t find the article.
Capsaicin doesn’t work because it is acidic or basic. It triggers the heat pain receptors on our tongue via a chemical process. Eating something acid or basic won’t really help. You need to wash it off the surface of the tongue.
In Texas, we used dairy fat like in butter or sour cream to help deaden the pain. Or, some people ate bread. Not sure why this helps. Maybe capsaicin is fat soluble, or that the bread and sour cream triggered you to produce more saliva that helped wash away the capsaicin. Or, maybe it gave us something to do besides whining about it instead of taking it like a man as a good Texan would.
Perhaps I am remembering a delusional episode, but aren’t spicy foods measure of “heat” rated in Scoville units? And also, if I remember correctly, the rating was based on how many spritzes of sugar water it took to deactivate the heat. Therefore, why not use sugar as an antidote? I can see why people would think milk would work as it has some natural sugars. Perhaps the amylase in the saliva works with the carbohydrates in the tortilla or tequila to make some simple sugar. I don’t know where salt works in this equation. But in the end, what works for you is what works.
The Scoville scale is a matter of dilution, not of antidote. A very hot pepper has a Scoville rating in the hundreds of thousands, which means that to dilute it away to the point where you couldn’t detect it any more you’d need hundreds of thousands of times the volume of the pepper in water.
Gargle with milk, spit it away without swallowing it, then gargle with vodka, and spit it away. Repeat as necessary.
You are trying to wash away an inflammatory agent that mixes in fat and alcohol but not in water.
No cites, but I thought milk worked better than water because of the butter fat, and the capsaicin is fat soluble but not especially water soluble. Or am I mistaken?
Well I know I read once that it was because the milk was an acid, but it was probably an unreliable source so I’m not going to swear it’s right. I’ve had lemon juice do a fair job of removing the taste, though maybe it just overwhelmed the taste buds with sour.
Capsiacin is an oil. Milk has fat content and thus binds to the oils and removes them. Alcohol is a solvent and strips the oil away. Water does not mix with oil, and so is a poor solvent for oil.
Bread will soak up oil, especially if it is buttered bread.
Lemon juice will act as a solvent, as well as overwhelm with sour.
No one has mentioned yogurt (or lassi as its known in India). A small dish of lassi and cucumber is server with hot curies in India for this purpose. Works much better than milk or any of the other suggestions from my own experience.
The chemistry of it has to do with the polarity of molecules, lots of fun stuff like that. Basically capsaicin is non-polar and water is polar, polar and non-polar things don’t mix, so water doesn’t wash away the capsaicin. Fats and oils are non-polar, so they dilute the capsaicin.
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Personally, I like sour cream to take away the burn.
Take away the burn? What kind of (deleted reference to girly-men and sissy-marys) are you people? The burn is where the fun is. Gimme that endorphin rush, baby!
Best method I’ve found to take away the burn is a nice buttered roll or slice of bread. I can’t prove this of course, but I believe more than anything else the abrasive properties of the bread help to dislodge the capsaicin from the tongue while the butter and additional saliva help to dissolve it.
[nitpick]What you are thinking of is called raita. Lassi is a yoghurt-based drink that is also commonly served with curry - and it does pretty much the same thing.[/np]
I agree that raita or lassi does a pretty good job of removing the burning sensation. I have never found (nor looked for) anything that removes the pain immediately.
We’ve had a similar discussion before.
I wonder how well a degreaser would work? Say… like a a shot of diluted dish soap like Dawn or Palmolive? I mean, sure it might taste awful …but in an emergency, who cares?
I mean it’s got to be better than Loyd and Harry’s ketchup and mustard cure right?