Hi. I’ve got a ceramic cruet I picked up at an art/wine fair. I used it for maybe a year in my old house, filled with olive oil. I moved to a new house with an old, ugly kitchen and this pretty bottle just didn’t go so I put it away for about a year. Now I’ve remodeled the kitchen and pulled out this pretty bottle again.
Only problem is that it now ‘sweats’ olive oil. If I let the bottle sit for a few days, there will be beads of oil all over the outside. If I wash them off with soap and repeat, several days later there’s oil ‘sweat’ again.
This didn’t used to happen when I used the bottle before! Did the long period of disuse ruin the bottle somehow? Should I toss it, or wait for this ‘sweating’ to subside (something that doesn’t seem to be happening)?
I can think of a couple of things that might have happened.
If you live in a climate with extreme highs and lows, the temperature changes could have caused microscopic fractures, especially if the cruet was of low quality or cured improperly.
Or, it could have picked up the fractures during the move.
If you really like this cruet and want to keep using it, couple of pottery “tricks” you might want to try.
Make a rice porridge and pour it into the cruet. Leave for 24 hours and wash clean. Apparently the starch from the rice makes a natural sealant.
Do the same thing but use spoilt milk. In this case it’s the curdling casein protein that acts as the sealant.
I have tried neither so no comment from me on their effectiveness, but it wouldn’t hurt to try.
After a thorough washing and drying, you might try gently heating it just enough to melt some food grade paraffin wax inside the cruet. Roll it around to try to get a light even coat all over the inner surface before pouring out the excess.
So after this thread, I bought a new cruet off amazon.
Everything was great for almost 3 years, and then this afternoon I noticed the same thing happening. I saw some sort of “glisten” under it and wondered if I’d somehow spilled water on the counter. Nope: there was a sheen of oil on the counter, and tiny beads of olive oil over the surface of the cruet.
Do ceramic cruets just, I dunno, break themselves after a while? I mean – 3 years, no leaks, then this!
There’s been no big temperature swings (suggested above), the cruet just sits there then… fails for no reason.
Dammit, I was just in Italy in May and saw some really cute Tuscan cruets (with a lemon, even) for like 23 Euro (close to half what I paid for this one), and just couldn’t bring myself to buy one when I had a perfectly (ha!) good one.
Stainless steel is what I see being used most often. The conical one appears to be identical to mine. Glass works well, too, but make sure it’s opaque.
