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DIVREY TORAH
These are featured in the weekly distribution of Ma Nishma.
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KOSHER KOLUMN
Principles of Kashrut Continued…
The Torah, as understood by the Sages, forbade the intentional cooking or eating of meat and milk together, as well as deriving any benefit from such an admixture. So it is the accidental admixture of milk and meat that becomes the likely concern in a kosher kitchen. Even when the most diligent precautions are taken, accidents can – and do – occur. Unlike commercial and industrial kitchens where only one kind of food product is prepared, meat or dairy, in the domestic kitchen both meat and dairy foods may be prepared at the same time.
Take the case of a piece of meat destined for the stew pot for dinner that falls from the cooks hand and lands in the pot of cream of mushroom soup being warmed for lunch. The mistake was unintentional. Yet the question of what to do with the soup as well as with the piece of meat must nonetheless be resolved. Assuming that the piece of meat was immediately removed, what needs to be determined is whether the meat imparted any discernable flavour into the soup. The Sages adduced from the Torah that a mixture of meat and milk means that the two are combined in such a way that one is changed by the other, specifically by taste. So if the taste of the cream of mushroom soup now is “meaty,” the soup is prohibited.
Since the mixture may be potentially prohibited, a Jew cannot do the tasting. During the time of Talmud, the remedy was to call on a non-Jewish cook to do the tasting. If no meat flavour was detectable, the soup was permitted. When no gentile cook was available, the Sages, again by adducing a text, ruled that the principle of one in sixty applied. That is, if the volume of the soup exceeded to size of the piece of meat by a factor of sixty or more, the imparting of any flavour would be impossible and the soup would be permitted. In effect, any flavour of meat would be nullified by the much larger volume of soup into which the flavour of the meat would dissipate entirely. This principle called “batel b’shishim” (Nullified in sixty) becomes one of the central rules of kashrut.
*** Last Updated 2009/03/04 *** |
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