This is the first set of silver I’ve ever owned. I purchased the set from a yard sale. The set is not complete but shined up well after I used the cloth that came with them.
I’ve used a spoon and a fork. Both tarnished as I ate my food. I tried the fork again today, after washing it was shiny again, but after I took my first bite it started turning. The tips are almost black and the tines have various amounts of tarnish progressing down toward the base.
Since I ate different foods with the fork each time I’m not sure what could be causing this reaction to take place so quickly.
If you can offer any insight I would greatly appreciate it.
Sulfur tarnishes silver, so foods with significant sulfur will definitely affect real silver.
That includes foods like eggs, garlic, and the cabbage family. Actually quite a few foods contains sulphur. As you noticed, cleaning the silver will help with that, but the fact is real silver tarnishes.
And, not to put too fine a point on it, oral halitosis (bad breath) is largely composed of sulfur compounds. Everyone has some, since the mouth is full of bacterial biofilms and little pockets of busy oral bacteria. So there’s another potential source of tarnish.
Except that I’ve used other silver utensils and only that one fork reacted so drastically and so quickly. I’ve been thinking it must have been the sunny side yup eggs that i was eating at the time. I’m going to try a different fork with the eggs and see if it happens again. That’s all I can think that could have happened.
