Based on the principle of BOTEL
BE’SHISHIM (nullification in 60)[1],
if one inadvertently cooked meat in a (clean) milk pot that was last used
within 24 hours, the first fact we need to ascertain is: How much meat was
cooked?
In theory, if the meat happened
to be 60 times more than the volume of the walls of the milk pot, the meat is
kosher. This is because even though the taste of milk is considered active
(since the pot was used for milk within the last 24 hours), there is nevertheless
60 times more meat to cancel out the effect of the milk.
If there is not 60 times more
meat, then it would be affected by the active milk taste emanating from the
walls of the pot, and the meat would not be permitted.
The interesting thing is that we do NOT know exactly how
much milk TAAM (taste) from the walls of the pot gets expelled and absorbed
into the meat – so we err on the side of caution and assume that there is milk
in the entire volume of the metal of the pot. We know this is not the technically
the case but this is our ASSUMPTION for purposes of the calculation of SHISHIM
(60).
However this presents us with
an interesting conundrum: Mathematically
it is IMPROBABLE for an average pot of average wall thickness, to contain 60
times more volume than the volume of its walls. For this reason, as a general principle, if meat is cooked in a BAT
YUMA[2] milk
pot, the meat would not be permitted.
[Daf 30,31. Perek 3. Seif 3,4.]
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ReplyDeleteFirstly, I think the comment above about the volume of the pot used to calculate 60x, should read - the area of the pot in contact with the liquid (or all of it where there is a lid).
ReplyDeleteThe most substantial volume of a pot is usually the base so where this has liquid in it, we are almost always unlikely to have enough meat inside of it to have at least 60x to cancel.
But in cases where there is no liquid in the pot, then we would only consider the area in direct contact with the meat, to calculate the 60x meat required, and where the base is thin, then this is more likely.