Wednesday, 4 February 2015

23) A PIECE OF MEAT FALLING INTO A POT OF HOT MILK


If a piece of meat inadvertently falls into a pot of hot milk (that was above 45 degrees centigrade), we need to ascertain whether or not there is 60 times more milk against the meat.
If there is SHISHIM (60 times more milk against the meat), the milk is absolutely permissible.
(The piece of meat, however, would have to be disposed of, as it becomes a prohibited mixture of BASAR BeCHALAV)[1].
If there is not SHISHIM (60) in the milk, then both the piece of meat and all the milk are prohibited.

The reason why we require SHISHIM (60 times more milk against the meat), is simply because of the following conundrum; We know that the heat in the milk will cause the piece of meat to expel TAAM (taste). But we are unsure just how much TAAM (taste) will be expelled. So we err on the side of caution and assume that TAAM (taste) gets expelled from the ENTIRE piece of meat.
Hence the mathematical calculation becomes a simple one; measure the volume of the entire piece of meat - measure the volume of all the milk, and see whether there is 60 times more volume of milk against the volume of meat.



[Daf 35, Siman 2, Perek 1, Seif 1,2]



[1] In the original Hebrew text it states; ‘VeZORKAH’ (that the meat has to be ‘THROWN AWAY’. I can only surmise that it means BURRIED, and not just thrown away. See post 5) WHAT TO DO WITH A COOKED ENTITY OF MEAT AND MILK

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