A friend told me recently that squeezing an orange peel releases “flammable” material. Sure enough, when I squeeze an orange peel (Navel variety) by my lighter, the aromatic substance released “sparks”.
There are little globules of oil (oil of orange) in the skin - as well as being flammable, it is highly aromatic, which is why the rind of citrus fruits is often scraped or pared off for use as flavouring.
Yes, I’ve known this for a while; if you slice through the skin of an orange with a sharp knife, you can actually see the little sacs in which the oil is stored; in thinner skinned citrus, such as satsumas, the oil glands actually make little dark bumps on the outer rind, if you look closely.
I’ve never actually set light to the oil myself, but I’ve seen it done over drinks at cocktail bars; I have sprayed it many a time by bending pieces of skin though.
As to what else is being held back… well… are you sure you want to know?
OK then, here it comes; most bananas contain a large (up to four inches long) worm-like insect larva, but it is seldom detected because:
-It becomes motionless when disturbed
-Its body has a texture, taste and appearance that is remarkably similar to the banana itself.
[sub]OK, it’s not actually true; I made the whole ‘banana worm’ thing up, but you have to admit, I had you going there for a moment[/sub]
I learned this in bartending class about 22 years ago. It works with lemons, too. When you ask for a drink “with a twist” (of lemon peel), it’s the oil that flavors the drink, and a good bartender will twist the rind over the drink so the oil spritzes into it.
That’s funny. This topic came up during a dinner party last Sunday. How do you ‘learn’ stuff that supposedly everyone ‘knows’?
One of the people at the party recently ran a marathon and had bloody nipples cause, as everyone knows, a t-shirt abraids them during the course of a marathon and they sell nip-guards just for that purpose. But he didn’t know. But as soon as he mentioned it to someone, they would say, “Well, everyone knows you have to wear nip-guards when you run a marathon.”