Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My
Speaker 2: name is Joe McCormick. My regular co host Rob Lamb
Speaker 2: is not with me today. He's going to be back,
Speaker 2: I think, for tomorrow's episode. So instead of Rob today,
Speaker 2: I am being joined once again by my friends and colleagues,
Speaker 2: Annie Reese and Lauren Vogelbaum, hosts of the food podcast Saver. Today,
Speaker 2: we're going to be recording part two of our series
Speaker 2: called Food Storage Mad Science, all about weird, spooky, and
Speaker 2: surprising things that can happen to leftovers and other foods
Speaker 2: during storage. If you haven't heard part one of this
Speaker 2: series that was Tuesday of this week, I'd recommend going
Speaker 2: back and listening to that one first, though I guess
Speaker 2: I don't know. The stuff we're talking about is not
Speaker 2: fully sequential, so if you'd rather listen to this one first,
Speaker 2: that that's okay too. But Annie and Lauren welcome back.
Speaker 1: Hi. Yeah, thanks for having us back.
Speaker 3: Yes, thank you.
Speaker 2: Okay. So, in part one of the series, we talked
Speaker 2: about two main food transformation phenomena. One was based on
Speaker 2: an anecdote that actually happened to me where a tray
Speaker 2: of leftover baked pasta eight holes in a sheet of
Speaker 2: aluminum foil while I had it stored in the refrigerator.
Speaker 2: We spent a while getting to the bottom of what
Speaker 2: exactly happened there and ended up discovering a pretty firm,
Speaker 2: but fascinating and bizarre answer. And then the other thing
Speaker 2: we talked about last time was the chemical process by
Speaker 2: which cooked or pickled garlic sometimes turns blue or jade
Speaker 2: green turns out. As long as this is not caused
Speaker 2: by mold, it is perfectly safe to eat, and in
Speaker 2: some food traditions, such as Chinese lava garlic, it's even
Speaker 2: an effect that people create on purpose. And we're back
Speaker 2: today to talk about more food transformations. So I think
Speaker 2: a major theme we're going to be looking at in
Speaker 2: this episode is the unexpected either explosion or combustion of
Speaker 2: food and drink. And if it's okay with y'all, I
Speaker 2: wanted to start by looking at a series of initially
Speaker 2: unexplained restaurant fires back around twenty nineteen. Yeah, we put
Speaker 2: on your fire investigator hats with shower, ok.
Speaker 1: Done.
Speaker 2: So here I'm relying on a few news articles to
Speaker 2: get the facts of the case, a July twelfth, twenty
Speaker 2: nineteen Wisconsin Public Radio article by Rob Mentzer, a July
Speaker 2: fifteenth article in The New York Times by Neil Victor,
Speaker 2: and a July sixteenth article for ABC News by Ela Torres.
Speaker 2: And so the story goes like this. In twenty nineteen,
Speaker 2: fire investigators in Wisconsin noticed a recent pattern of what
Speaker 2: appeared to be spontaneous combustion leading to fires in local restaurants.
Speaker 2: Primarily it was in places that served sushi. There were
Speaker 2: fires in two different sushi restaurants in the city of Madison, Wisconsin.
Speaker 2: And to get a little color on what happened here,
Speaker 2: I'm going to read from the ABC reporting quote. One
Speaker 2: blaze broke out at Sumo Steakhouse and Sushi Bar on
Speaker 2: April fifth, at around two thirty am. Firefighters entered the restaurant,
Speaker 2: threw a hatch on the roof, and found the kitchen
Speaker 2: in flames. A sprinkler managed to prevent the fire from
Speaker 2: further damaging the building, and the restaurant has since reopened.
Speaker 2: Another fire occurred on May tenth at the Madison restaurant
Speaker 2: to Kara, just before midnight. Firefighters were able to quickly
Speaker 2: extinguish the fire, though the damage was extensive to Kara
Speaker 2: remains closed and that was as of July twenty nineteen. Again,
Speaker 2: so fortunately no one was injured in these two incidents,
Speaker 2: but the damage was extensive, totaling more than five hundred
Speaker 2: and seventy five thousand dollars combined at the two restaurants. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so like serious fires, both of them happening in the
Speaker 2: middle of the night. That's kind of interesting, Like after
Speaker 2: the restaurants had closed, fires picked kicking up in the kitchen.
Speaker 2: So this is not from somebody actively cooking and setting
Speaker 2: fire to something. But this was not all. These two
Speaker 2: fires were linked to a pattern of similar restaurant fires
Speaker 2: across the state of Wisconsin. I think there were five
Speaker 2: total in Wisconsin, and then more across the rest of
Speaker 2: the United States, including in Saint Paul, Minnesota, and Ashburn, Virginia,
Speaker 2: and at least one fire in Canada. So big question
Speaker 2: what was causing these fires. Authorities got on the case,
Speaker 2: and these articles I mentioned all include interview material with
Speaker 2: a particular Wisconsin based fire investigator who I think was
Speaker 2: the lead investigator on this case, named Kara Nelson. Nelson
Speaker 2: coordinated with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms to
Speaker 2: determine the cause of these blazes and ended up tracing
Speaker 2: them back to a form of what investigators call spontaneous combustion. Now,
Speaker 2: we could quibble about whether spontaneous combustion is a misleading
Speaker 2: term or not. I know, sometimes people trying to be
Speaker 2: scientifically accurate don't like that term because it could suggest
Speaker 2: that it's like without a cause somehow, you know, and
Speaker 2: they're they're usually various causes you can identify. In any case,
Speaker 2: I think it's definitely accurate to say surprise combustion. So
Speaker 2: a case of some surprise combustion which was occurring in
Speaker 2: all of these restaurants in the same food material, which
Speaker 2: was deep fried tempura flakes. Okay, y'all, y'all have feelings
Speaker 2: about tempora generally or deep fried tempora flakes. You know
Speaker 2: the crunch they put on the sushi rolls.
Speaker 3: Well, now I'm a little nervous.
Speaker 2: There's no I don't think you have anything to be
Speaker 2: afraid of from eating it. It's it's not an eating problem.
Speaker 2: It's a storage issue. We'll get in, we'll get to
Speaker 2: the bottom of it. But uh, but yeah, are you
Speaker 2: timpoora fans at least.
Speaker 1: No, No, I don't want fried in my sushi. It's
Speaker 1: I understand that it's a thing that some people enjoy.
Speaker 1: I'm there for raw fish.
Speaker 3: I agree with Lauren, But I like tempora as a
Speaker 3: separate thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, okay, that's that's where I am. Annie. I'm
Speaker 2: not so big on the tempora in sushi, but I
Speaker 2: love like tempora shrimp or tempora vegetables.
Speaker 1: They're fine, They're often a little soggy for me. If
Speaker 1: I using using tempora tempora flakes specifically at home, it
Speaker 1: can be can be nice, like I enjoy a timpora batter,
Speaker 1: but you have to do it really care. I'm picky
Speaker 1: about my fried food. If I'm going to invest the
Speaker 1: caloric undertake of of fried food, I want to be
Speaker 1: real excited about it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Okay, well I get that. But yeah, I appreciate
Speaker 2: at least tempora fried things on their own, but so
Speaker 2: Timpura deep fried tempora flakes are known in Japanese as
Speaker 2: aga dama or tinkasu, meaning tempora dregs, and as I
Speaker 2: think I just said, sometimes on menus you will see
Speaker 2: them described as crunch because it's mainly used to add
Speaker 2: a crispy textural element to certain sushi rolls. Timpura batter
Speaker 2: is typically made with some combination of wheat, flour and water,
Speaker 2: like a lot of batters, but you can have other
Speaker 2: things in there as well. Sometimes there will be other
Speaker 2: flowers or starches like corn starch. You might have baking powder, egg,
Speaker 2: so it's you know, it's nothing all that unusual as
Speaker 2: far as batter composition goes. Normally, when you're making tempura,
Speaker 2: you would dip your food in the batter and then
Speaker 2: deep fry it so that the batter forms a crispy
Speaker 2: coating on the fried food. But to make timpura crunch,
Speaker 2: you're just gonna be frying the batter itself. So you
Speaker 2: make these flakes by ladling a bunch of little drops
Speaker 2: of batter into the hot oil, and then you scoop
Speaker 2: them out with the strainer and deposit them into a
Speaker 2: storage vessel. And here's where the problem comes in. When
Speaker 2: these fried flakes are stored densely packed in a bowl
Speaker 2: or a pot, the heat cannot escape very well, and
Speaker 2: adding on that hot oily batter, when exposed to oxygen,
Speaker 2: can undergo a self accelerating chemical reaction that gives off
Speaker 2: even more heat, and if this heat cannot be removed
Speaker 2: fast enough, it just keeps building up until this fried
Speaker 2: food ignites, catches on fire, and then you have a
Speaker 2: kitchen fire. Karen Nelson, the fire investigator, quoted in the
Speaker 2: New York Times, says, quote, it is no different than
Speaker 2: the chemical reaction that causes more well known substances to
Speaker 2: spontaneously combust. It can happen in hay bales, it can
Speaker 2: happen in mulch piles, and apparently also in timpero flakes.
Speaker 2: So what does it look like when this happens. Well,
Speaker 2: the New York Times article includes security camera footage from
Speaker 2: inside one of these restaurants where the timpero flakes were
Speaker 2: made earlier in the day, in the afternoon and then
Speaker 2: left in a colander in the kitchen to cool. And
Speaker 2: you can see from the time stamps on the video,
Speaker 2: about six hours after they were first cooked, the flakes
Speaker 2: start smoking, and then something like ten hours after cooking,
Speaker 2: they actually catch on fire. And then the fire gets
Speaker 2: bigger and bigger, and then the walls are covered in flames.
Speaker 2: And then the part I found really scary is you
Speaker 2: see the sprinkler system come on and it starts dumping
Speaker 2: water all over the kitchen, but the fire does not
Speaker 2: immediately go out. It keeps flaming, kind of sputtering against
Speaker 2: the spray of water from above. I think the sprinklers
Speaker 2: can eventually douse the fires, you know, they cool them
Speaker 2: off and deprive them of oxygen. But for a while
Speaker 2: it looks like the fire is fighting back.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, No, kitchens are terrifying, terrifying, yeah, for that reason.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, So what exactly is this chemical reaction in
Speaker 2: the tempera batter that's causing it to act this way?
Speaker 2: Once again, like in the last episode with the aluminum
Speaker 2: anode in the Lasagna battery, we are looking at the
Speaker 2: process of oxidation at the molecular level. The fats and
Speaker 2: oil used in cooking are mainly composed of molecules called triglycerides,
Speaker 2: which in turn are made of a core lipid molecule
Speaker 2: called a glycerol bonded with three fatty acids. Triglycerides are
Speaker 2: found throughout nature. They're one of the main ways that
Speaker 2: animals and plants store energy for later use. So animals
Speaker 2: store these as fats in their adipose tissue, plants often
Speaker 2: store them in seeds or fruits. It's a very very
Speaker 2: efficient way to store a lot of energy in a
Speaker 2: small amount of matter, which is the main reason that.
Speaker 2: Also that fats are very calorically dense as a food,
Speaker 2: So you know, you're trying to store a lot of
Speaker 2: food in a small space and a small amount of weight.
Speaker 2: You want to have as many fats as you can. Also,
Speaker 2: that's delicious, right, and they taste good, yeah, for evolutionary
Speaker 2: reasons because their energy dense exactly.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So when oils made of triglycerides are exposed to oxygen,
Speaker 2: such as in the atmosphere, in the air around us,
Speaker 2: they undergo a chemical reaction called autooxidation. The oxidation reaction
Speaker 2: with the air the oxidation of triglycerides can sometimes result
Speaker 2: and it can do different things. It can sometimes result
Speaker 2: in polymerization, which is when small isolated lipid molecules called
Speaker 2: monomers bind together to form long chain molecules called polymers.
Speaker 2: And this is not the main process at play in
Speaker 2: Timpura flate combustion. But I did want to stick on
Speaker 2: this for a second because it relates to our conversation
Speaker 2: in the last episode about food reacting in interesting chemical
Speaker 2: ways with cooking pans. Polymerization is what happens when you
Speaker 2: season a cast iron or a carbon steel pan to
Speaker 2: create a rustproof and non stick surface. So you rub
Speaker 2: oil all over the iron and then you apply high
Speaker 2: heat to it. This heat helps oxidize the oil really fast,
Speaker 2: and it makes the oil molecules bond together into a
Speaker 2: big sheet of plastic y polymers coating the metal. And
Speaker 2: that does multiple things. It both protects the metal from
Speaker 2: exposure to oxygen, and it also makes the cooking surface
Speaker 2: more non stick. Are y'all very protective of cast iron
Speaker 2: and carbon steel cookware? I know, I know some people
Speaker 2: in their kitchens are like, you know, I don't let
Speaker 2: anybody use my cast iron pan. I'm afraid they might
Speaker 2: wash it the wrong way and get my seasoning off.
Speaker 2: Some people are very protective. My mom's like that.
Speaker 3: One time, I'm not great at it. And once before
Speaker 3: I knew more about cast iron pans, I was trying
Speaker 3: to help out a friend of mine who had made dinner,
Speaker 3: and I washed her cast iron pan, and she looked
Speaker 3: at me and was like, oh, my seasoning. You were
Speaker 3: like that because you are supposed to wash them. But
Speaker 3: I had really gone in for the scrub.
Speaker 2: Like, oh, dish detergent and steel wool.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I still feel a lot of guilt about
Speaker 3: that whole thing.
Speaker 2: If you really go hard, you can you can do
Speaker 2: a lot of damage. But also I think people are
Speaker 2: a little overly precious about that. Like, you know, a
Speaker 2: quick wash with a little bit of soap, you usually
Speaker 2: still retain most of the seasoning. It's not going to
Speaker 2: be too bad. But yeah, if you really scrub at
Speaker 2: it and use a lot of detergent in there, it'll
Speaker 2: strip it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, even if you use a little bit
Speaker 1: of steel while on there, unless you know, if you're
Speaker 1: just using it to lightly scrape the surface not dig
Speaker 1: into it. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, you know.
Speaker 1: I but that being said, I do washvine with hot water,
Speaker 1: maybe a little bit of salt on a clean sponge.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I do that.
Speaker 1: Then I just yeah, I just rub, I'll oil into it,
Speaker 1: pop it in the toaster oven for like half an
Speaker 1: hour at two hundred go nice.
Speaker 2: I wish I could say I re season every time
Speaker 2: I use it. I know, they say, ideally that's what
Speaker 2: you do. Instead, I tend to have more like seasoning
Speaker 2: days when I have a day when I can set
Speaker 2: aside a few minutes to get out all of my
Speaker 2: all of my carbon steel and cast iron cookware, rub
Speaker 2: it all with oil, put it all in the same ovens.
Speaker 2: So that kind of saves energy if you do it
Speaker 2: all in the oven at the same time. But yeah,
Speaker 2: I try to take care of it, but I could
Speaker 2: take better care, I guess.
Speaker 1: I will say that the cast iron that I use
Speaker 1: in my home belongs to my roommate, and I'm more
Speaker 1: precious perhaps with her cast iron cookware than I would
Speaker 1: be with my own.
Speaker 2: So in addition to this where we're like baking oil
Speaker 2: onto our pans, you know, intentionally using very high heat
Speaker 2: to polymerize it, there are some special types of oil
Speaker 2: known as drying oils. Like this includes linseed oil or
Speaker 2: walnut oil, things like that that when exposed to oxygen,
Speaker 2: especially in the presence of heat, but when exposed to oxygen,
Speaker 2: naturally undergo oxidation and polymerization as they dry or people
Speaker 2: sometimes call this curing maybe drying. Normally, when we think
Speaker 2: about liquids drying, we're imagining water based liquids or maybe
Speaker 2: alcohol or something which dry by evaporating into the air.
Speaker 2: Of course, oils don't evaporate. When these oils dry, we're
Speaker 2: typically talking about them oxidizing in reaction with the air
Speaker 2: and then forming a hard polymer. So drying oils are
Speaker 2: often used as the base lipid and substances like paint.
Speaker 1: This is also why you can rub some walnut oil
Speaker 1: into like a hardwood floor if it's getting a little
Speaker 1: patchy in places, and it will help help reseal the floor.
Speaker 2: Yes, exactly totally. So these they have the sealent quality
Speaker 2: because they form the polymerization surface. But a different oxidation
Speaker 2: process is more important to consider in the case of
Speaker 2: food and also in the case of fires, and that
Speaker 2: is decomposition. This is when oils exposed to oxygen start
Speaker 2: to break down at the molecular level. So triglycerides react
Speaker 2: with oxygen to form these unstable molecules called hydroperoxides, and
Speaker 2: then the hydroperoxides, because they are unstable, break apart into smaller,
Speaker 2: volatile molecules of many different kinds. You get short chain
Speaker 2: fatty acids, aldehydes, esters ketone, and as a side note,
Speaker 2: a lot of these breakdown products smell and taste bad.
Speaker 2: The oxidation of cooking oil is the main cause of
Speaker 2: oil ransidity. So when oil is old or it's been
Speaker 2: sitting too long in the fryer and starts to taste bad,
Speaker 2: that usually means that a lot of these oxidation by
Speaker 2: products are mixed in with the oil and they produce
Speaker 2: these unpleasant, sometimes bitter or metallic flavors and aromas. But then,
Speaker 2: on the other hand, I do believe that some of
Speaker 2: the pleasant aromas and flavors we associate with fried foods
Speaker 2: also come from some oil oxidation and breakdown products like
Speaker 2: that kind of you know, festival food, fried food smell.
Speaker 2: I think that that's some of that too. But if
Speaker 2: you get too much oxidation, I think that is when
Speaker 2: things start to be overwhelmingly unpleasant. Ever, you know, you
Speaker 2: smell the oil in the bottle and something just smells
Speaker 2: like metal or something m.
Speaker 1: Mmm, or if you come home from a dive bar
Speaker 1: and your shirt is just you're like, oh, this is
Speaker 1: bad fryar smell.
Speaker 2: Oh why.
Speaker 1: I ate those fries?
Speaker 2: Oh no, yeah, But okay, So anybody with some experience
Speaker 2: in the kitchen is going to be familiar with these
Speaker 2: cases of oil oxidation, like oil ransidity. If the oil
Speaker 2: is old enough it's gonna smell weird, taste bad or
Speaker 2: seasoning cast iron pans and stuff. But how does oil
Speaker 2: reacting with oxygen actually result in a fire. So, the
Speaker 2: autooxidation of unsaturated fats is what's called an exothermic reaction,
Speaker 2: meaning the chemical reaction releases heat. It takes heat to
Speaker 2: get going, but it also releases more heat when it happens.
Speaker 2: So if a bunch of oily material like oily fried
Speaker 2: bits of batter or oily rags another common example here,
Speaker 2: if a bunch of that material is kept bunched up
Speaker 2: tightly in space somewhere, the heat from that exothermic reaction
Speaker 2: gets the oil around it hotter, which makes the oxidation
Speaker 2: happen faster in the surrounding oil, and then it releases
Speaker 2: more heat, and the heat can't escape because it's all
Speaker 2: packed together in a bowl, and you get runaway thermal
Speaker 2: escalation until it starts smoking and then catches fire. So,
Speaker 2: coming back to the sushi restaurant fires, this article by
Speaker 2: Wisconsin Public Radio describes some tests that fire investigators use
Speaker 2: to confirm their theory about the spontaneous combustion of timpura batter.
Speaker 2: One of the restaurants agreed to make a test batch,
Speaker 2: and according to Karen Nelson, the investigator from Madison, when
Speaker 2: they measured the temperature in the middle of the bowl
Speaker 2: of fried batter, it had reached two hundred and seventy
Speaker 2: seven degrees. The article does not say fahrenheit or celsius.
Speaker 2: I think this has to be fahrenheit because oily batter
Speaker 2: at two hundred and seventy seven celsius would probably already
Speaker 2: be on fire.
Speaker 3: Yes, no, no, yeah, yeah, that sounds like a very
Speaker 3: bad situation, but.
Speaker 2: That's still I mean, even fahrenheit, that's hot inside. That's
Speaker 2: start starting with a lot of heat packed in there.
Speaker 2: And then if you just leave it sitting, you would
Speaker 2: expect and naturally, when you leave hot things sitting, they
Speaker 2: cool off over time. But this one, the heat starts
Speaker 2: triggering this rapid oxidation reaction with the air and it
Speaker 2: gets hotter instead of cooling off, and it just gets
Speaker 2: hotter and hotter until you have a fire. In Karen
Speaker 2: Nelson's words quote, as they deep fried in batches, they
Speaker 2: put it into a colander or mesh strainer in batches,
Speaker 2: so they're basically adding heat every time. So the heat
Speaker 2: builds and builds once it hits ignition temperature, that's when
Speaker 2: a fire occurs. Now, one question I had about this
Speaker 2: is why is it that oily rags or fried batter
Speaker 2: can spontaneously or again, spontaneous combustion is used throughout this reporting,
Speaker 2: so maybe to put aside spontaneous, why is it that
Speaker 2: oily rags or fried batter can go under surprise combustion
Speaker 2: but a massive oil on its own does not, Because
Speaker 2: it is the oil that's oxidizing reacting with the air.
Speaker 2: And I believe the answer here is mainly about surface area.
Speaker 2: Oily rags or oily craggy bits of fried food expose
Speaker 2: more oil to the air all at once than you
Speaker 2: would be able to with just a volume of oil
Speaker 2: stored on its own. When oil is in a container,
Speaker 2: most of the oil is submerged and only the top
Speaker 2: surface is exposed to the air. And then on top
Speaker 2: of that, oily rags or timpuraflakes also accelerate the reaction
Speaker 2: because the air pockets inside these masses of rags or
Speaker 2: food provide insulation and they keep the heat trapped inside
Speaker 2: for longer.
Speaker 1: I wonder if you also have in there the factor
Speaker 1: of some kind of combustive material that gets the whole
Speaker 1: process kind of started once it gets hot enough, like
Speaker 1: you've got the flour or you've got cotton in the
Speaker 1: case of rags. I mean there have been without oils
Speaker 1: particularly present, there have been all kinds of fires and
Speaker 1: in flower facts over the course of history.
Speaker 2: So yes, yeah, grain fires can be a big thing,
Speaker 2: especially when the grain is I know, the big thing.
Speaker 2: There is a lot of powdered foods can cause fires
Speaker 2: when they're dispersed in the air. So like this can
Speaker 2: happen with flour or any kind of grain. It can
Speaker 2: happen with powdered milk if you have you know, dairies
Speaker 2: and creameries, they can have powdered milk fires. So yeah,
Speaker 2: that is certainly a risk too. So it probably does
Speaker 2: not hurt that the the thing that's being fried also
Speaker 2: is a pretty ready fuel source. You know, it's not
Speaker 2: like something that won't burn being coated in oil.
Speaker 1: We should be making flakes of meat for sushi.
Speaker 2: But so okay, let's say that maybe I'm a person
Speaker 2: who loves tempera crunch, and I want to make temper
Speaker 2: a crunch, but I don't want to start a fire
Speaker 2: in my kitchen. What are some ways around this? One is,
Speaker 2: if you're making fried tempera batter or any similar fried substance,
Speaker 2: don't store it in a densely packed way right after
Speaker 2: you cook it. So don't dump it into a bowl
Speaker 2: or anywhere that it is densely piled up on itself.
Speaker 2: Spread it out on a baking sheet or some of
Speaker 2: their surface where it can cool more efficiently. Another piece
Speaker 2: of advice they give is don't make a batch of
Speaker 2: fried batter and then like at the end of the
Speaker 2: night and then leave it unattended overnight. That is what
Speaker 2: happened in some of these cases. These articles recommend that
Speaker 2: restaurant owners make fried tempura batter in the morning so
Speaker 2: that you will be around in the kitchen to observe
Speaker 2: it during the danger window, which these articles suggest is
Speaker 2: something like maybe ten to twelve hours after cooking.
Speaker 1: So well for a danger window, Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: I do want to clarify that it's nothing about the
Speaker 2: tempura specifically that is the cause here. It seems that
Speaker 2: this could be any piece of you know, fried something
Speaker 2: that you're frying, a bunch of little pieces of something
Speaker 2: and then pouring it in a bowl and storing it
Speaker 2: like that. I think the same thing could happen there.
Speaker 2: So if you're getting crispy bits off of your I
Speaker 2: don't know, if you're working in a fish fry shop
Speaker 2: or something like that, you could probably get a similar
Speaker 2: thing if you have a bunch of little bits of
Speaker 2: fried something and you're storing them in a way that
Speaker 2: does not evaporate, that does not allow heat to radiate
Speaker 2: away efficiently.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And generally speaking, by spreading things out on for example,
Speaker 1: a baking pan or something, you're gonna get them to
Speaker 1: well I mean, okay, So the point is that your
Speaker 1: point in not catching your kitchen on fire is that
Speaker 1: you're going to get it to cool more efficiently. My
Speaker 1: point hinges on the same thing, and it's going to
Speaker 1: stay crisper longer, yeah, because it's not going to just
Speaker 1: kind of be sitting in oil.
Speaker 2: Right. So Yeah, Generally, when you want to keep things crispy,
Speaker 2: you don't pile them on top of each other because
Speaker 2: that leads to sogginess. That is my experience as a
Speaker 2: cook as well. Yeah, all right, Well that is all
Speaker 2: I have on the surprise combustion of tempura batter. What
Speaker 2: do you all have next? In terms of food transformations.
Speaker 1: Uh, okay, can we can we talk about fermentation?
Speaker 2: Absolutely?
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, Oh, fermentation is my favorite. Anyone who is
Speaker 1: here from Saverre knows exactly how much I like going
Speaker 1: on about bacteria and yeast poop because, like I said
Speaker 1: in the last episode that we were here for, they
Speaker 1: really do make the world go round. Most of my
Speaker 1: favorite foods have some form of fermentation involved. And also
Speaker 1: microbes are really cool. And for my first example of this,
Speaker 1: I want to talk about Boston's Great Molasses Flood of
Speaker 1: nineteen nineteen. But okay, let me let me paint the
Speaker 1: whole story for you. And also note at the top
Speaker 1: here see my Dearly Departed podcast American Shadows for a
Speaker 1: dramatic reading of this story with like a nice SOUNDBD
Speaker 1: in it, and like the whole thing. I got to
Speaker 1: really use my like schweaty ball voice in that one.
Speaker 1: So it was a fun. It was a fun thing
Speaker 1: to do. But okay, basically, it's nineteen nineteen and there
Speaker 1: was this two million gallon tank for molasses hanging out
Speaker 1: in Boston in the North End. That's about seventy five
Speaker 1: million liters for our metric friends. This thing stood fifty
Speaker 1: feet tall and ninety feet across. That's like fifteen by
Speaker 1: twenty seven meters, and okay, molasses if you're unaware of
Speaker 1: what molasses is, it's this like thick, sticky, cooked down
Speaker 1: type of sugar syrup. It was invented as a byproduct
Speaker 1: of industrial sugar refining, in which you convince a liquid
Speaker 1: sugary juice from sugarcane or sugar beets to crystallize into
Speaker 1: pure white sugar using some heat and some seed crystals.
Speaker 1: What you're left with is this sugary syrup that you
Speaker 1: can keep cooking and crystallizing as much sugar as possible
Speaker 1: out of, and it will darken in color and develop
Speaker 1: all kinds of like rich bitter flavors from caramelization, and
Speaker 1: that is molasses.
Speaker 2: Can I add a misconception I used to have, which
Speaker 2: is I used to think that brown sugar and white
Speaker 2: sugar worked like brown rice and white rice, that like, oh,
Speaker 2: white sugar was just further refined brown sugar. But that's
Speaker 2: not true from what I understand, correct that brown sugar
Speaker 2: is actually crystallized sugar that has had some amount of
Speaker 2: molasses mixed in, and the presence of molasses is why
Speaker 2: it has that more complex flavor than white sugar. It's
Speaker 2: a little you know, it tastes a little bit more caramelized.
Speaker 2: There's something more complex to it.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and light brown sugar has less molasses than dark
Speaker 1: brown sugar, and that's that also has to do with
Speaker 1: the moisture level of those two products. But yeah, so
Speaker 1: molasses is tasty on its own or added to baked
Speaker 1: goods or what have you. But it's also great for
Speaker 1: fermenting into like a kind of sugar wine that you
Speaker 1: can then just still into alcohol, either for drinking like
Speaker 1: rum or for absolutely not drinking, like industrial grade ethanol that,
Speaker 1: for example, went into munition production during World War One.
Speaker 2: So you could say molasses then could be thought of
Speaker 2: as an industrial product, not just a food product.
Speaker 1: It is absolutely an industrial product. You do not get
Speaker 1: molasses without the industrial production of white sugar. So yeah,
Speaker 1: you can kind of mock it up in your own house,
Speaker 1: but that's a different Go see your episode about Golden
Speaker 1: Truckle for that one. So, okay, super brief rundown on fermentation.
Speaker 1: Fermentation is what happens. And I don't know how often
Speaker 1: y'all go over that on this show, but I love
Speaker 1: doing the spiel, So okay. So fermentation is what happens
Speaker 1: when microscopic fungi, yeasts in particular eat sugar and poop
Speaker 1: carbon dioxide and alcohol and flavor. And this is why
Speaker 1: yeast bread rises in the oven and also has that
Speaker 1: particular scent it like a like a very slightly like warm,
Speaker 1: almost boozy scent to it. It's why there are bubbles
Speaker 1: and alcohol in beer. Usually you can also get them
Speaker 1: in there in a few other ways, but that's another
Speaker 1: that's another topic. Sometimes the carbon dioxide is a waste
Speaker 1: product and you let it release, like for example, if
Speaker 1: you're making a still wine. But with these bases in place.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 1: Back back to Boston. So Purity Distilling Company in Boston
Speaker 1: made ethanol for the Great War Effort, also a little
Speaker 1: bit of run, but mostly mostly ethanol. And so they
Speaker 1: had this steel tank at Boston Harbor at North End,
Speaker 1: just just off Commercial to receive shipments of molasses from
Speaker 1: the Caribbean. Like every couple of days. They had these
Speaker 1: big hoses. The ships would come in, they'd fill in
Speaker 1: new molasses at the top of the tank. They had
Speaker 1: valves at the bottom so you could pour it out
Speaker 1: and then transport it by train over to the factory.
Speaker 2: A lot of molasses changing hands.
Speaker 1: A lot of molasses coming in and going out. And
Speaker 1: this tank was like a known entity in that part
Speaker 1: of town that only built it in like nineteen fifteen.
Speaker 1: And it leaked in some places, like kids would come
Speaker 1: filch some that had just kind of spilled out onto
Speaker 1: the ground. Totally sanitary. But you know, the tank was big,
Speaker 1: and it made the whole street smell like sweet and heavy,
Speaker 1: especially in the heat of summer. And the tank groaned
Speaker 1: and it was getting louder. So molasses is so good
Speaker 1: at fermenting that it was just doing that in the tank.
Speaker 1: Like the yeasts that make fermentation happen are living everywhere
Speaker 1: all around us. They are in the air. There is
Speaker 1: a reason that humans invented alcohol a couple thousand years
Speaker 1: before we invented the wheel, and that is that alcohol
Speaker 1: happens spontaneously or by surprise if you just leave sugary
Speaker 1: stuff out.
Speaker 2: I think I was just reading recently speculation that you know,
Speaker 2: while we think of alcohol as a drinking product now,
Speaker 2: it is thought just as likely that early alcohol products
Speaker 2: may have been food products, like a kind of gruel
Speaker 2: left out deferment that would become a kind of alcoholic gruel.
Speaker 1: I mean, at a certain point, you're you're letting you're
Speaker 1: letting microbes do the work. They didn't know it at
Speaker 1: that point, but you're letting microbes do the work of
Speaker 1: breaking down your food so that some of the nutrients
Speaker 1: are more accessible to your body when you consume them.
Speaker 2: So, but people they figured out, they liked it, and
Speaker 2: they learned how to do it on purpose.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, anyway. So so one of the workers who
Speaker 1: was attending to this tank, by the name of Isaac Gonzalez,
Speaker 1: he had nightmares about this tank. He was venting the gas.
Speaker 1: Every day. He would sneak over in the middle of
Speaker 1: the night and siphon molasses into the harbor. He told
Speaker 1: his bosses about the vibrations and the creeks and the
Speaker 1: groans he showed. He showed them flakes of steel that
Speaker 1: were coming off of the inside of the tank. He
Speaker 1: told them that the leaks were springing up bigger and
Speaker 1: more often. Like he wound up quitting. He was so
Speaker 1: worried about it. He was like, I would rather go
Speaker 1: to war than be part of whatever this mess is
Speaker 1: about to be.
Speaker 2: And to be clear, you said, he was siphoning parts
Speaker 2: of it off, so like on his own initiative, out
Speaker 2: of safety concerns, he was dumping product.
Speaker 1: Dumping product and just hoping that it wasn't that it
Speaker 1: was enough to relieve the pressure and not so much
Speaker 1: that he would get caught and fired.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: Until he quit, he was like, screw you guys, I'm
Speaker 1: going to war. And his bosses ignored him. They did
Speaker 1: have bigger things on their minds, like the war did
Speaker 1: end in late nineteen eighteen, which meant that they needed
Speaker 1: to pivot to making drinkable alcohol. But then the Prohibition
Speaker 1: Amendment was ratified just a few months later in early
Speaker 1: nineteen nineteen, which meant that they had a clock running
Speaker 1: down to January of nineteen twenty, after which they could
Speaker 1: not legally produce alcohol anymore. And faced with this, they
Speaker 1: decided to just go ham on production up until they
Speaker 1: had to stop, so they ordered more molasses. They filled
Speaker 1: up the tank and it exploded like there was a roar.
Speaker 1: I've heard it described like a train mounted with machine guns.
Speaker 1: The earth shook, rivets and other shrapnel from the tank
Speaker 1: sliced through nearby train cars. It was twenty six million
Speaker 1: pounds of molasses. It like ripped a nearby firehouse off
Speaker 1: of its foundation, trapping the firemen inside for days. It
Speaker 1: crushed freight cars. It wasn't moving all that fast after
Speaker 1: the initial rush, but it was like a roving tar pit,
Speaker 1: you know. And people died, Like twenty one people passed
Speaker 1: in the immediate aftermath, and I think more passed later
Speaker 1: from resulting injuries. And the company, the company was like, oh,
Speaker 1: maybe Italian terrorists blew it up. We don't know, no
Speaker 1: way of knowing.
Speaker 2: But they had been told that this tank was not
Speaker 2: up to code.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, absolutely, yeah, like a lot, like a bunch
Speaker 1: of times.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: The survivors wound up launching a class action lawsuit against them.
Speaker 1: Isaac Gonzalez testified the survivors won. The whole thing led
Speaker 1: to engineering safety reform laws. It turns out that the
Speaker 1: construction had been a rush job and like not the
Speaker 1: best possible design, as the company was just racing to
Speaker 1: prepare for that war contract in nineteen fifteen, so it
Speaker 1: has a better ending, questions, aren't surprised?
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, a good turn after the tragedy. That yes,
Speaker 2: led to some safety reforms. But so we think that
Speaker 2: we know that there were problems with the safety of
Speaker 2: the tank as constructed, and then the question would also
Speaker 2: be was fermentation contributing to the danger posed by this tank?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I would strongly suspect yes, because it's
Speaker 1: just going to build the pressure. I mean that the
Speaker 1: pressure of that much molasses is already going to be
Speaker 1: pretty intense. But once you add build up of carbon
Speaker 1: dioxide and other gases, than sure.
Speaker 2: We know lots of other examples of where food products
Speaker 2: under the right or I guess the wrong conditions can
Speaker 2: and undergo fermentation that causes them to build up pressure
Speaker 2: when they're inside some kind of closed container, rupture it
Speaker 2: and cause an explosion.
Speaker 3: Yes, And so this is where I want to talk
Speaker 3: about exploding watermelon, which I know might be a technicality
Speaker 3: when it comes to our theme, but I feel like
Speaker 3: the rind is sort of a storage container.
Speaker 2: Sure, it's a nature storage container. It is nature's steel
Speaker 2: pan with the Yeah, so we're getting there. Yeah, this
Speaker 2: is fine. I rule it in bounds.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Joe, appreciate it. Okay, So back in twenty
Speaker 3: twenty three, there were these reports circulating with really menacing
Speaker 3: headlines about exploding watermelons. Essentially, the news stories went as follows,
Speaker 3: leave your watermelon on your counter at your own perrel.
Speaker 3: It could explode at any moment. And we were talking
Speaker 3: about this before, Joe, and you actually have some experience.
Speaker 2: Weirdly enough, just like with the the lasagna tray I had. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I've had this happen, not to me personally, but to
Speaker 2: two different members of my extended family. So my mother
Speaker 2: in law and my sister in law both I think
Speaker 2: this was in twenty twenty three, both had watermelons explode
Speaker 2: on them in different ways. So, uh, The story from
Speaker 2: my wife's parents' house was that I think in the
Speaker 2: early morning, in the pre dawn hours, they had had
Speaker 2: a watermelon sitting in the kitchen and they suddenly just
Speaker 2: heard a pop, you know, some kind of pop sound.
Speaker 2: They went down to the kitchen to investigate, and my
Speaker 2: mother in law found the guts of a watermelon everywhere.
Speaker 2: It's all over the ceiling and the walls, like massive
Speaker 2: explosion of a watermelon. I think it was a big
Speaker 2: clean up job. And yeah, nothing had happened to it.
Speaker 2: It was just a watermelon that I don't know exactly
Speaker 2: where it came from. I think just store as far
Speaker 2: as I know, and yeah, it's been sitting on the
Speaker 2: counter and exploded and went everywhere. But the other story
Speaker 2: was my wife's sister, also, I think, within like weeks
Speaker 2: of that original story happening, also had a watermelon at
Speaker 2: her house and it didn't do anything on its own,
Speaker 2: but when she cut into it with a knife, she
Speaker 2: like stuck a knife into the watermelon, and as soon
Speaker 2: as she pierced it, it went like pump and then
Speaker 2: a huge crack split the rind across it transverse to
Speaker 2: where the knife cut was. So yeah, and she said
Speaker 2: it felt like it had been under pressure, and when
Speaker 2: she released the pressure, it cracked and split apart. Which
Speaker 2: is a little bit scary in that case because I
Speaker 2: don't know if this would really happen, but I would
Speaker 2: be scared of like piercing something with a knife that
Speaker 2: is under pressure. I wonder, is that gonna like blow
Speaker 2: the knife back at you. It didn't happen in this case,
Speaker 2: so I don't know if that's really a concern, But
Speaker 2: so yeah, this apparently happens often enough that like two
Speaker 2: totally different, unrelated cases both happened to my wife's family
Speaker 2: within a few weeks of each other. A few years ago.
Speaker 2: I do wonder kind of about the about how close
Speaker 2: in time and space these two different exploding watermelon stories were, Like,
Speaker 2: is that a result of I don't know, watermelons coming
Speaker 2: from the same farm or field being more likely to explode.
Speaker 2: I have questions about that, but maybe maybe you can
Speaker 2: help answer them.
Speaker 3: Yes, I think we can. Also, you have provided two
Speaker 3: of the most common examples of how this happens. Okay,
Speaker 3: of just a watermelon on your calendar exploding, or when
Speaker 3: you go to cut it and it explodes. All right,
Speaker 3: But what is going on here? It is our friend
Speaker 3: fermentation largely behind this whole watermelon rind exploding thing, and
Speaker 3: it is spurred on by high summer temperatures and or
Speaker 3: the age of the fruit. So the older the watermelon,
Speaker 3: the more like it is to explode. But the heat
Speaker 3: kick starts a process similar to that in alcohols like beer,
Speaker 3: where the sugar converts into alcohol, releasing CO two in
Speaker 3: the process, which builds up inside the fruit.
Speaker 1: And what's happening here is that if the skin of
Speaker 1: the fruit is even slightly imperfect during the growing season,
Speaker 1: microbes can get in and start eating the flesh of
Speaker 1: the watermelon before you have a chance to That's what
Speaker 1: we mean when we say that food is spoiling. And
Speaker 1: this can happen due to damage to the rind or
Speaker 1: due to a normal but unfortunate flub in growth where
Speaker 1: the fruit starts growing from a pollinated flour and eventually
Speaker 1: the like non fruit parts of the flour will fall
Speaker 1: off and there's like a little hole there that's supposed
Speaker 1: to close up, and if it doesn't at first, then
Speaker 1: fungi like yeasts and other stuff like bacteria can get
Speaker 1: in and grow with the watermelon, feeding on that developing
Speaker 1: fruit and putting off gases like carbon dioxide. And then
Speaker 1: if that initial hole or wound closes up, the gases
Speaker 1: will build up inside the now sealed melon.
Speaker 3: Yes, and once the pressure reaches a certain point, the
Speaker 3: watermelon can explode, either left on the counter or when
Speaker 3: someone goes to cut into it. This is kind of
Speaker 3: the fruit version of shaking a can of soda and
Speaker 3: having it explode on you. From what I've read, it
Speaker 3: can be pretty dramatic, a loud bang fruit everywhere, like
Speaker 3: you were talking about, Joe I. When we were discussing
Speaker 3: doing this topic, I delved back into some old emails
Speaker 3: for Saver from listeners, and I found a lot of
Speaker 3: stuff about exploding things, actually, but specifically in this case,
Speaker 3: I've found some about exploding fruit. So a Savor listener
Speaker 3: wrote into us about a watermelon exploding in her it
Speaker 3: was like their shared She had a roommate and it
Speaker 3: was their shared kitchen in twenty eighteen. She described a
Speaker 3: loud pop and the sound of gushing liquid coming from
Speaker 3: the kitchen. She also left it to her roommate because
Speaker 3: it was her roommate's watermelon to clean up. And it
Speaker 3: was a month old watermelon.
Speaker 1: Ooh.
Speaker 3: And then in twenty seventeen, a listener wrote in about
Speaker 3: a quote pineapple grenade that exploded, leaving behind a strong
Speaker 3: smell of alcohol from fermentation, and.
Speaker 1: That was canned pineapple, like home canned pineapple.
Speaker 3: I believe I think it was a whole pineapple.
Speaker 1: Oh really, Oh god.
Speaker 3: I thought somebody else wrote in about a can of pineapple.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, cabinet too.
Speaker 1: Many exploding pineapple products. Sorry I got confused.
Speaker 3: You got to watch out as what I've learned. Okay,
Speaker 3: But in these twenty twenty three watermelon incidents, which is
Speaker 3: when news was going wild reporting this, a bacteria may
Speaker 3: have also been involved. This bacteria interacted with the yeast
Speaker 3: and sugar inside the watermelon, and perhaps the exterior heat
Speaker 3: as well to speed up the fermentation. In this case,
Speaker 3: toxic pathogens can be introduced, which is part of the
Speaker 3: issue here, other than the whole exploding thing, because fermentation
Speaker 3: isn't bad, but in this instance, harmful bacteria can be introduced. Okay.
Speaker 3: Sometimes this whole thing can be combated by a crack
Speaker 3: in the rind, which does allow the pressure to release slowly.
Speaker 3: If you see a foaming watermelon, avoid it or dispose
Speaker 3: of it.
Speaker 1: No rabid watermelons in this house. That's a motto.
Speaker 2: Yeah, boaming watermelon. I think I'm going to eat that one.
Speaker 3: Looks it looks strikingly more menacing than I thought it
Speaker 3: would when I read about it, and I was like, no, actually,
Speaker 3: I probably would stay away from that.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, we established last time. You're a food daredevil.
Speaker 2: You have you would not touch the foaming watermelon. Okay.
Speaker 1: Also, I strongly believe that would not smell appetizing.
Speaker 3: Yes, I listeners, go look up the images. It's quite something.
Speaker 3: It really really is. Cold temperatures slow the process. So
Speaker 3: storing a watermelon in the refrigerator can help delay but
Speaker 3: not totally prevent explosion. Experts recommend cleaning the rind before slicing,
Speaker 3: which I think is just good practice.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 3: One of my favorite quotes reading about this was from
Speaker 3: the Daily Meal quote the only real way to deal
Speaker 3: with this issue is to monitor your watermelons closely.
Speaker 2: Or I'm getting a security camera exactly.
Speaker 3: I love this. Or here's a quote from Food Network.
Speaker 3: This is the summer that sweet red fruit is taking
Speaker 3: on a sinister tinge. We're being warned that the backyard
Speaker 3: barbecue staple may start foaming in a threatening sort of way.
Speaker 3: I'm telling you, they really really ran with this whole thing.
Speaker 3: They loved it. But it does. Like I said, the
Speaker 3: bomb does look threatening, and it leaks out of any
Speaker 3: any cracks of the rind, so you can get strange patterns.
Speaker 2: So I have questions in several ways. One, I'm just
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm no expert in fruits, but I'm just
Speaker 2: surprised that the rind of a food like a watermelon
Speaker 2: would be air tight enough that it would fully be
Speaker 2: able to contain expanding gases from fermentation. I would just
Speaker 2: think that I don't know that the gases would be
Speaker 2: able to permeate it and escape somehow. It's just surprising
Speaker 2: to me that it's that tight. It actually functions like
Speaker 2: a you know, balloon basically.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I mean it's they're meant to be waterproof
Speaker 1: from from the outside, like most a lot of I'm
Speaker 1: not an expert on watermelon rinds in particular, a lot
Speaker 1: of fruit skin will allow moisture to leave but not enter.
Speaker 1: Think about an orange, for example, and how they might
Speaker 1: like dry out if you have it sitting in the
Speaker 1: fridge without some kind of protective covering. But but yeah,
Speaker 1: melons there, they're a whole thing.
Speaker 3: You can also have. Do you know what a vodka
Speaker 3: melon is?
Speaker 2: Yes, see I have, I have those kind of friends. Yeah, yes, me.
Speaker 1: So you know how a melon can hold liquid that
Speaker 1: you put inside of it?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's true. You know, yeah, I should I should
Speaker 2: have used my vodka melon memories to better analyze this.
Speaker 2: It's just it's counterintuitive. It seems surprising, But I mean,
Speaker 2: that's also cool that the rind can function that way. So,
Speaker 2: but my question would be, like, I'm surprised kind of
Speaker 2: in the same way that I'm surprised there were so
Speaker 2: many sushi restaurant fires so close in time and space
Speaker 2: to each other, I wonder if this is just like
Speaker 2: a you know, in that case, I wondered if it
Speaker 2: was just kind of a salience bias thing that you know,
Speaker 2: this actually happens more often, but people don't group together
Speaker 2: the incidents or analyze them in this way, and so
Speaker 2: maybe that led to the impression that there was kind
Speaker 2: of a clustering of it. In this case, I would
Speaker 2: really be wondering, like, how common are exploding watermelons that
Speaker 2: you would get, You know, people who live in the
Speaker 2: same city having exploding watermelons a few weeks apart from
Speaker 2: each other, when they'd never dealt with this phenomenon ever
Speaker 2: in their lives before or since.
Speaker 1: I would assume it has something to do with the
Speaker 1: particular growing season and growing conditions. You can get different
Speaker 1: populations of microorganisms in the air and in the soil.
Speaker 1: So maybe if the melons were coming from a particular farm,
Speaker 1: maybe if there were just the right conditions for the
Speaker 1: rind of that melon to grow along with the expanding gas,
Speaker 1: because melons can grow quite quite quickly, and so maybe
Speaker 1: if they were just just growing right along with the
Speaker 1: interior biome it just leads to just the right conditions
Speaker 1: to let it happen more often.
Speaker 3: Yes, And a lot of the news at the time,
Speaker 3: accurately or not, was reporting that the heat it was
Speaker 3: like a particularly hot growing season and partly the hot summer,
Speaker 3: and that was contributing to it in twenty twenty three.
Speaker 1: So that can that can affect the growth of the
Speaker 1: melons and also the growth of the bacteria and easts.
Speaker 2: So yeah, as we said in the last episode, in chemistry,
Speaker 2: most things happen faster when it's hot.
Speaker 3: Yes, all of that being said, though this isn't really
Speaker 3: a common thing, I think it grabs a lot of
Speaker 3: people's attention. And that that being said, historically, there is
Speaker 3: a time in recent history that there was a space
Speaker 3: of watermelons exploding. In twenty eleven, there were a lot
Speaker 3: of reports of watermelons exploding in China after the use
Speaker 3: of chemical growth accelerators were applied on some farms.
Speaker 1: This one is partially a case of like over enthusiastic
Speaker 1: media reporting these watermelons were splitting open from like a
Speaker 1: lack of structural integrity due to too rapid growth. It
Speaker 1: wasn't they weren't exploding. It was not that dramatic. They
Speaker 1: were just cracking open.
Speaker 3: Yes, the chemical in question is forcheler finuron, which is
Speaker 3: a legal chemical that helps the cells of the fruit separate,
Speaker 3: but in the case of watermelon, can lead to less
Speaker 3: desirable results in terms of white seeds and kind of
Speaker 3: a wonky fruit shape. Reporters blamed the farmers for using
Speaker 3: this chemical too late in the game when the weather
Speaker 3: was wet, which led to the watermelons exploding. Some farmers
Speaker 3: lost entire acres watermelons, and at least one reported not
Speaker 3: being able to sleep due to images of these fruits exploding.
Speaker 3: And we're talking like one hundred a day, so it
Speaker 3: was a pretty substantial loss. Forchler Fenuron, which has been
Speaker 3: used in China since the nineteen eighties, is generally considered
Speaker 3: to be safe for consumption, but when interviewed, some experts
Speaker 3: suggested that watermelons are kind of finicky and not suitable
Speaker 3: for this chemical. On top of that, though some watermelons
Speaker 3: not treated with this chemical in China were exploding at
Speaker 3: the time. According to some reports, it may have been
Speaker 3: the weather or the size of the watermelon that caused
Speaker 3: the explosions in those cases.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I'll put in here that, like any number
Speaker 1: of things, can cause a loss of structural watermelon integrity,
Speaker 1: Like the grinds are good at their job, but only
Speaker 1: to a certain point, right.
Speaker 3: And you can see the experiment that involves wrapping river
Speaker 3: bands around watermelons until they explode, which videos that honestly
Speaker 3: make me nervous, but people love exploding watermelons on the internet,
Speaker 3: and it does look cool in slow motion.
Speaker 2: Watermelons, it has good goop, you know, like different types
Speaker 2: of I think if you're gonna have a fruit explode
Speaker 2: in an interesting way, like a watermelon's a good one.
Speaker 2: It seems like the goop has the right amount of
Speaker 2: moisture and consistency to really just turn into kind of
Speaker 2: guts that go everywhere. That seems that way to me.
Speaker 1: It's still bright and festive, festive guts.
Speaker 3: Moving on to aluminum cans, so a similar thing happens
Speaker 3: that's going on with watermelons, as we've been discussing when
Speaker 3: aluminum cans of beer carbonated sodas explode. In cars, hot cars, specifically,
Speaker 3: the interiors of cars can be quite a bit hotter
Speaker 3: than the outside, especially over time, and this can to
Speaker 3: the carbon dioxide molecules separating from the liquids and putting
Speaker 3: more and more pressure against the aluminum container that they
Speaker 3: are in.
Speaker 1: Yes, and note that these cans are already under pressure.
Speaker 1: And that's that's because basically, carbon dioxide has no interest
Speaker 1: in getting itself permanently mixed up with water or with
Speaker 1: like water plus whatever sugar syrup you've got going on
Speaker 1: in a cannesoda. Like little bits of carbon dioxide will
Speaker 1: dissolve into water, but the water molecules can't really hold it.
Speaker 1: Most of the gas of its own accord would just
Speaker 1: float on top of the liquid. So to convince it
Speaker 1: to stay put, you have to apply pressure. And when
Speaker 1: you apply that pressure, it forms sort of cages of
Speaker 1: water molecules around carbon dioxide molecules, holding them in place.
Speaker 2: Which is why when you open a carbonated beverage suddenly
Speaker 2: you see all these bubbles escaping. They've been held in
Speaker 2: place by the pressure, and you just released it by
Speaker 2: opening the vessel exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, when you're applying that pressure. It helps
Speaker 1: a lot to do so at cold temperatures, as we've
Speaker 1: been talking about, because all of the molecules involved will
Speaker 1: be less active and like more willing to pack it
Speaker 1: in you can. You can think of it sort of
Speaker 1: like a busy elevator, like if the ac is out,
Speaker 1: you might be less willing to crunch in with a
Speaker 1: bunch of people in there. Because and right, and and
Speaker 1: as you may know, as temperature increases, pressure also increases,
Speaker 1: so you can dissolve a lot more carbon dioxide and
Speaker 1: water at cold temperatures with less pressure in use. If
Speaker 1: you've done all this right, your carbonated water will contain
Speaker 1: like five times as much carbon dioxide as water by volume.
Speaker 1: This is what we call a supersaturated solution, meaning that
Speaker 1: as long as you keep it under pressure, like until
Speaker 1: you pop the top on that can or leave it
Speaker 1: in a hot car, you can let the can heat
Speaker 1: up to room temperature or a little bit above without
Speaker 1: any gas escaping front from the water, from the matrix
Speaker 1: of water that's in. But we're not talking about a
Speaker 1: little above room temperature in a hot car.
Speaker 3: No, no, no, no. This pressure can increase up to
Speaker 3: five or six times during this process when left in
Speaker 3: a hot car. Most cans are designed to withstand this
Speaker 3: amount of pressure, but of course there are some that aren't,
Speaker 3: or imperfections or flaws that could lead to failure. Most
Speaker 3: of the time, this occurs at the top where the
Speaker 3: sea meets the body of the can. And I'm sure
Speaker 3: all of you have seen the lids of these cans
Speaker 3: with a bubble or a distended bit at the top.
Speaker 3: That's often what's going on. It doesn't mean the can
Speaker 3: is going to explode if you open it. That's relatively rare.
Speaker 3: Usually the bubble is just a way to really pressure.
Speaker 2: Does that usually mean that it's because the can got
Speaker 2: hot at some point or is there another main cause?
Speaker 3: You know, I I think it's usually it's either damage,
Speaker 3: some kind of damage happened, or imperfection happened, or heat. Yeah, yes,
Speaker 3: I know that. That is a story that I see
Speaker 3: every couple of years pop up where people are freaking
Speaker 3: out about like what does this bubble mean in my can.
Speaker 2: And confusing that in the case of carbonated beverages with
Speaker 2: the really the dangerous thing, which is bulging cans that
Speaker 2: might have botulinum toxin in them.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, you can drink from a bulby can, but
Speaker 1: but if your food can has gone bulby, that's that
Speaker 1: is a no. That is a no go.
Speaker 2: Good to know.
Speaker 3: Again, we aren't this is These are all good facts
Speaker 3: right here. But we're not food experts.
Speaker 1: We're not medical professionals.
Speaker 3: Yes, but this is what the science tells us. Oh
Speaker 3: and speaking of in July, news outlets were reporting about
Speaker 3: exploding cans of soda on south West flights due to heat.
Speaker 3: Many of the hub cities for Southwestern cities that broke
Speaker 3: their tempature records that year. That was one of the
Speaker 3: things they speculated might be the cause of it. When
Speaker 3: reached for comment, Southwest expressed that the possibility of these
Speaker 3: exploding cans had been communicated to employees and no incidents
Speaker 3: involved customers.
Speaker 2: I would have to imagine the cans couldn't be getting
Speaker 2: that hot in the cabin with the passengers, right, that
Speaker 2: would be in some kind of storage. Oh, because if
Speaker 2: the passengers were that hot, that sounds like a bad flight.
Speaker 3: Yeah, hold my comments to myself.
Speaker 2: Yes, Oh, do you have experience with Southwest?
Speaker 3: I have experience with bad flights?
Speaker 2: Oh? Okay. It truly is like, I don't mind being
Speaker 2: hot when I'm outside, but there is something that is
Speaker 2: it makes me feel like I'm losing my mind if
Speaker 2: I'm feeling too hot inside an airplane. That is one
Speaker 2: of the most horrible types of just basic uncomfortable feeling.
Speaker 2: I don't know what it is about the airplane environment.
Speaker 2: It when you're hot in an airplane, it feels like
Speaker 2: it means something, and it means something dangerous and and yeah,
Speaker 2: threatening like the threatening foaming watermelon.
Speaker 1: I've got a lot of good threats in this episode.
Speaker 3: I did.
Speaker 1: I did want to put in here that an entirely
Speaker 1: different thing than than what we've been talking about with
Speaker 1: these exploding cans is happening when a can of soda
Speaker 1: explodes in your freezer. And that happens because because water
Speaker 1: molecules have to be liquid in order to contain carbon dioxide.
Speaker 1: So when they start to freeze, they can a increase
Speaker 1: in size and be pushed the gas molecules out, both
Speaker 1: of which will eventually explode the can.
Speaker 3: And there have been a couple of recalls around Kraft beer,
Speaker 3: especially those with fruit involved, around concerns of exploding cans.
Speaker 3: Wild beers and sours involved ferments that can be difficult
Speaker 3: to predict.
Speaker 1: Ooh okay, And so fermentation in the can is a
Speaker 1: thing that I have kind of a side quest about,
Speaker 1: and that is about champagne danger.
Speaker 3: M Yes, do.
Speaker 2: Either of y'all know anything about like good champagne as
Speaker 2: a consumer of it, That's just something I've never I've
Speaker 2: never pierced that that, you know. I like good beer
Speaker 2: and good wine, but the only champagne I think I've
Speaker 2: ever really had is just whatever the cheapest stuff you
Speaker 2: get for New Year's is.
Speaker 3: Uh. I've learned through the show, and I feel like
Speaker 3: I have a good like medium tier and I've had
Speaker 3: really fancy champagne before, but I feel confident my If
Speaker 3: I need a cheap one, here's a pretty good one.
Speaker 3: If I need a medium tier one, here's a pretty
Speaker 3: good one. I usually don't go beyond that unless it's
Speaker 3: an extremely special occasion.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've tried really hard to not teach myself what
Speaker 1: good champagne tastes like, because I don't want I don't
Speaker 1: want to be burdened with that knowledge. Also, as an
Speaker 1: expert in the field told us one time, like there's
Speaker 1: a certain point at which, like you won't be able
Speaker 1: to appreciate it if you're not seriously into wine, So like,
Speaker 1: don't don't bother with that.
Speaker 2: I will say, like we need to intentionally inculcate an
Speaker 2: expensive passion.
Speaker 1: Yeah, ain't got time for that, although I will say
Speaker 1: that if you're if you're looking for a decent bottle,
Speaker 1: if you look for words along the lines of metald champagnoi,
Speaker 1: the Champagne method, or some translation of that, perhaps in
Speaker 1: Spanish or Italian, that's a pretty good marker of decent
Speaker 1: quality in a Champagne. It means it was made through
Speaker 1: the traditional method, which is what I'm going to talk
Speaker 1: you through a tiny bit right here. It means that
Speaker 1: the second fermentation occurred in the bottle, but we're not
Speaker 1: ready for that yet. So all right, let us start
Speaker 1: by explaining that before a couple of technological advancements happened
Speaker 1: in like the sixteen to eighteen hundreds, sparkling wine, especially
Speaker 1: if it was bottled in glass, was probably accidental and
Speaker 1: definitely dangerous. Like if you've heard of Dampignon, that name
Speaker 1: is the name of this monk who legend dand or
Speaker 1: history has it was assigned to stop the sparkle in
Speaker 1: sparkling wine. Oh that's funny, yeah, yeah, So so enter
Speaker 1: Levin dub the Devil's wine. That's what this phenomenon was
Speaker 1: called at the time. This phenomenon that sometimes seemingly spontaneously
Speaker 1: kind of a whole wine cellar would just explode. But okay,
Speaker 1: let's back up. So you get the intense sparkle in
Speaker 1: sparkling wine by making a normal wine and then putting
Speaker 1: it through a secondary fermentation in which you add more
Speaker 1: yeast and a little bit more sugar to each bottle
Speaker 1: and then let the yeast do their thing. They eat
Speaker 1: the sugar, they produce carbon dioxide and a tiny bit
Speaker 1: more alcohol. But at this point it's really just the
Speaker 1: CO two that you're looking for, and before you sell
Speaker 1: the bottle, you carefully get the dead yeast out of there.
Speaker 1: But yeah, keeping that much carbon dioxide dissolved in the
Speaker 1: wine means that again the bottle, the interior of the
Speaker 1: bottle is under a lot of pressure, like five to
Speaker 1: six atmospheres or seventy to ninety psi, which is something
Speaker 1: like the pressure inside of a truck tire.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, So you have to have a sturdy
Speaker 1: bottle and a sturdy fastener to keep it contained. So
Speaker 1: what was going on with these exploding wine cellars. The
Speaker 1: vindudiel is that temperatures in some wine regions like Champagne
Speaker 1: would get cold enough early enough in the season that
Speaker 1: cellared bottled wine would stop fermenting in the winter before
Speaker 1: the yeast was done doing its thing. Oh and then
Speaker 1: when it warmed up again in the spring, it would
Speaker 1: undergo the second wave of fermentation, which would dramatically raise
Speaker 1: the pressure inside the bottles and make them go fizzy
Speaker 1: and also make them explode, which was actually like a weird,
Speaker 1: huge and scary problem. I've read that between four and
Speaker 1: ten percent was like a common loss in wine cellars
Speaker 1: due to bursting, and that bad warm fronts would to
Speaker 1: some thirty to forty percent breaking. Other sources say that
Speaker 1: sometimes the majority of a cellar could be lost, but
Speaker 1: basically like a single bottle going off could start a
Speaker 1: chain reaction around the cellar. Workers in these in these
Speaker 1: in these particular wine producing regions would wear heavy iron
Speaker 1: masks and full body padding to go into the cellar.
Speaker 2: Just in case, I'm trying to look that up right.
Speaker 1: Now, they looked sort of like medieval beekeepers, if the
Speaker 1: beekeepers were like a little more metal.
Speaker 2: Looking hard I cellar iron masks, you know. Oh okay,
Speaker 2: I see, Oh I see. It's more of a more
Speaker 2: kind of a mesh kind of thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well yeah, yeah, not like the man in the
Speaker 1: iron Mask, Iron Mask.
Speaker 3: Yeah so if I was misleading.
Speaker 1: But yeah yeah, so, uh, this all got solved because
Speaker 1: like a few dudes in England worked out how to
Speaker 1: make stronger glass with these super hot cool coal fueled
Speaker 1: furnaces by the sixteen twenties or so, and those higher temperatures,
Speaker 1: plus like the cosmetic but useful additions of iron and
Speaker 1: manganese to the glass made the bottles just much stronger.
Speaker 1: The coke fuel being developed around the same time, would
Speaker 1: eventually help glass making down the line. Also, the wire
Speaker 1: cap that goes over the cork when you open a
Speaker 1: bottle of champagne, you have that, you have that wire
Speaker 1: cap over the cork. Yeah, it hooks under the lip
Speaker 1: of the bottle to secure the cork in there. That
Speaker 1: was patented in the eighteen forties. It genuinely does help.
Speaker 1: And starting around the early nineteen hundreds, there were also
Speaker 1: fewer cellar explosions because the crown cap hit the scene.
Speaker 1: You know, the little notched bottle cap, Nukem cola cap
Speaker 1: you know, Yeah, yeah, that hit the scene in the
Speaker 1: early nineteen hundreds. So secondary fermentation these days takes place
Speaker 1: with a crown cap on which is pretty secure. But uh,
Speaker 1: but yeah, it just it's it's a lot of pressure
Speaker 1: in this bottle, and that extreme pressure in a bottle
Speaker 1: of sparkling wine is partially why you want to serve
Speaker 1: it chilled, other than it being delicious. Uh, Like, the
Speaker 1: cork is less likely to go flying when you take
Speaker 1: off that wire cap if the bottle is chilled. This
Speaker 1: is also why professional savors, you know, people who hack
Speaker 1: the tops off of champagne bottles for fun and profit,
Speaker 1: why they're fairly meticulous about keeping bottles chilled, because you're
Speaker 1: when when you suborer open a bottle of champagne, you're
Speaker 1: you're looking to induce a clean break in the glass
Speaker 1: at a weak point in the neck, and you're less
Speaker 1: likely to get glass of flying if the pressure is
Speaker 1: slightly lower due to the temperature being slightly lower.
Speaker 2: Hmmm. Interesting, I had no idea. Uh yeah, I thought
Speaker 2: it was just a taste thing. Well, I did not
Speaker 2: know any of this about the Devil's Wine.
Speaker 1: Yeah, wine making fermentation in general is full of danger.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of stuff that can go weird.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, I had been aware of fermentation explosions
Speaker 2: as a possibility because I've made fermented foods at home.
Speaker 2: I've made kimchi and sour kroud and stuff, and of
Speaker 2: course I've got some special little bottle of jar caps
Speaker 2: that I use there that have like a flap where
Speaker 2: they just pop open. You can get those pretty easily.
Speaker 2: But you know, I'd always read like, you don't want
Speaker 2: to if you're making it in a jar, you don't
Speaker 2: want to do it with a tight screw on cap,
Speaker 2: because your jar can actually explode, like the gas builds up.
Speaker 2: It's that strong. And I'm sure a lot of people
Speaker 2: if probably like if you buy kimchi or sour krowd
Speaker 2: in a jar or something, you might have had it
Speaker 2: explode in your fridge. That can happen.
Speaker 3: Yes, And when I was researching this, I found an
Speaker 3: article about kombucha doing that, which I had recently confessed
Speaker 3: to Lauren. I have this kombucha that's really really old,
Speaker 3: and I was like, surely it's fine, because that's what
Speaker 3: it does. This article is like, baby, be a little
Speaker 3: careful you open it.
Speaker 2: You open it under a towel, Like that's what I do.
Speaker 2: And I'm opening champagne open under a towel. That always
Speaker 2: works fine.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, it helps to get a grip on the cork too. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so good. Though, if you ever do need a bottle
Speaker 1: of champagne sabered open, it so happens that Annie and
Speaker 1: I are Dames of sabrage. We were knighted by a day.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're certified Dames of subrisin.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think Annie is slightly more certified than I am. Mine.
Speaker 1: Mine didn't go as well as hested, but but tries.
Speaker 1: But you got a good clean break.
Speaker 2: Wow. Well, hey, next time we we We've been meaning
Speaker 2: to get our D and D group back together sometime,
Speaker 2: and next time we do that, I think we should
Speaker 2: have a bottle of champagne and see y'all slice it open,
Speaker 2: maybe with a magical sword, a magical item of some kind.
Speaker 1: See, and you don't. It's it's it's not again, it's
Speaker 1: not a slice, it's a break. So you can sabrage
Speaker 1: open a bottle with any any like heavy enough object.
Speaker 1: You're basically just looking to really tap it in the
Speaker 1: correct place. You can do it with the golf club.
Speaker 1: You can do it with a totally blunt object. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yes, And actually the person Lauren mentioned earlier about developing
Speaker 3: your taste.
Speaker 1: Harry Contentstinescu yeah.
Speaker 3: Yes, he was the person who taught us. But he
Speaker 3: also he told us that story in reference to the
Speaker 3: fact that he had, according to him, a bottle of
Speaker 3: champagne from the Titanic and he was waiting to develop
Speaker 3: his taste buds enough to appreciate this bottle. But that
Speaker 3: also shows you how strong these bottles are.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that's a good point. Wait, from the Titanic,
Speaker 2: as in rescued from the bottom of the ocean.
Speaker 3: Yes, what really? Yeah, okay, that's what he told him.
Speaker 2: I have to look that up.
Speaker 3: Okay, yes, a report back. If he is told as
Speaker 3: a fallacy, I'll reach out to him and be like,
Speaker 3: how dare you?
Speaker 2: I have to look into this again.
Speaker 1: That the pressure inside a bottle is equal to a
Speaker 1: couple hundred feet of ocean depths.
Speaker 2: So that's amazing. Okay, No, I seriously will look into
Speaker 2: it any Lauren. It has been such fun talking to
Speaker 2: you today. We are hitting our time limit, I think,
Speaker 2: so we're going to need to bold but anything else
Speaker 2: you'll want to talk about with food storage, mad science
Speaker 2: before we wrap things up.
Speaker 3: Yes, but we don't have the time right now.
Speaker 1: I do want to put in a shout out to
Speaker 1: this book that I've been meaning to read since it
Speaker 1: landed on my desk in twenty nineteen about the Boston
Speaker 1: molasses flood. It's called Dark Tide, the Great Boston Molasses
Speaker 1: Flood in nineteen nineteen by one Stephen Puelo. And so yeah,
Speaker 1: I have not I still haven't read the whole thing.
Speaker 1: So any errors in my material above was mine. But
Speaker 1: it's a really cool book. Go check it out.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, well, thanks again so much, Annie Reese
Speaker 2: and Lauren Vogelbaum. Hey can you say once again where
Speaker 2: people can find your work?
Speaker 1: Sure you can find the podcast savor wherever you get
Speaker 1: your podcasts. I'm also on a short form show called
Speaker 1: brain Stuff that's science and history and whatever I'm interested in.
Speaker 1: That week, Annie is on Stuff Mom Never Told You,
Speaker 1: which is a feminist, intersectional cultural show, lots of NERD
Speaker 1: references in there. Also, I'm doing a new show with
Speaker 1: Dan Bush called Alive Again, which is a nonfiction show
Speaker 1: about what happens when people have a near death experience
Speaker 1: and how sometimes something about the near death experience, but
Speaker 1: often more about how it informs the way that they
Speaker 1: live from then on. So that's a heavy one, but
Speaker 1: a fun one. Also if you would like to if
Speaker 1: you are listening to this as it comes out and
Speaker 1: you're in the Atlanta area, We're going to be at
Speaker 1: the PRX Podcast Creator Summit on a panel on Wednesday,
Speaker 1: July thirtieth from seven to nine pm. It's going to
Speaker 1: be about telling food stories in Atlanta with a couple
Speaker 1: of really amazing other panelists. And it's free and open
Speaker 1: to the public and located Plywood on the West Side
Speaker 1: with a reception afterwards at Monday Night brewing with free
Speaker 1: drinks and food. So come gauk at us. We're awkward
Speaker 1: and we would love to see you.
Speaker 3: And make your food opinions known.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, tell us all of your tell us all
Speaker 1: your weird ones. We want strong opinions.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, well, Lauren, Annie, thank you so much.
Speaker 2: Let's see. What do we usually say at the end
Speaker 2: of the show is if you are new to the
Speaker 2: show and you want to know what we do here,
Speaker 2: this is stuff to blow your mind. We are a
Speaker 2: science and culture podcast with core episodes publishing on Tuesdays
Speaker 2: and Thursdays of every week. On Fridays, my regular co
Speaker 2: host Rob Lamb and I do an episode called Weird
Speaker 2: House cinema where we just watch weird movies. They can
Speaker 2: be old, new, good, bad, well known, or obscure. The
Speaker 2: only real criterion is they've got to be weird. No,
Speaker 2: let's see. We do short form episodes on Wednesdays, and
Speaker 2: then on Mondays and Saturdays we run older episodes of
Speaker 2: the show, either from the vault of core episodes or
Speaker 2: a Weird House Cinema rewind. If you want to follow
Speaker 2: us on social media, I'm sure you can find us
Speaker 2: on there with some variation of Stuff to Blow your
Speaker 2: Mind or Blow the Mind or something. You can follow
Speaker 2: us on letterboxed for our Weird House Cinema account that
Speaker 2: is just called weird House and I think that about
Speaker 2: does it huge. Thanks as always to our excellent audio producer,
Speaker 2: JJ Posway. Thanks once again to Annie and Lauren for
Speaker 2: joining me today. If you would like to get in
Speaker 2: touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other,
Speaker 2: to suggest a topic for the future, or just to
Speaker 2: say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff
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