Tuesday 15 October 2013

Does stainless steel get rid of garlic smells?

This morning a tweet caught my eye
Speculation followed.
But before we get to the 'how' question maybe we should figure our if there is any truth in the anecdotes.

So how about an experiment? And I'll be needing your help for this one.

You'll need
  • A clove of garlic.
  • A knife.
  • A timer.
  • A wooden spoon and a stainless steel table spoon of about the same size.


What to do
1. Wash and dry your hands (so they don't smell of anything to start with).

2. Cut the clove of garlic in half (don't peel it, that way your fingers won't pick up garlic smells when you hold it).

4. Rub the freshly cut surface on the palm of one hand for 10 seconds (use the timer).

5. Rub the second piece of garlic on the palm of your other hand for 10 seconds (this way each hand gets rubbed with a fresh piece of garlic of the same size).


6. Rub one palm with the back of the stainless steel spoon and the other palm with the wooden spoon (the wooden spoon is our control experiment). Again for 10 seconds each. Make sure you remember which hand was rubbed with which spoon.

7. Find a willing volunteer, ask them to close their eyes (with their eyes closed they are less likely to notice any signals from you about which hand has had what treatment).

8. Hold a hand under their chin (that way each hand will be the same distance from the test subjects nose) and ask them to smell it. Then do the same with the other hand.


8. Ask them which hand smelt stronger of garlic.

9. Let me know the results using the survey below. We'll need plenty of tests if we are going to be sure of our results, otherwise it's just more anecdotes.

I'll  get back to you with a conclusion when enough results are in.

Create your free online surveys with SurveyMonkey , the world's leading questionnaire tool.

6 comments:

  1. We need a surface scientist with access to sulfur K-edge XANES... lets see what the stainless steel surface looks like after contact with garlic odor!

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    1. We'll track one down once we know if stainless steel makes a difference.

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  2. Do you think that a wooden spoon is a good control as it's porosity may encourage more adsorption of the odorous compounds?

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    1. Could be, but if that is the case then it does at least show that, as far as removing smells is concerned, there is nothing particularly special about steel.

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  3. I actually did some research on this topic in undergrad - the compound we identified as the smelly compound is diallyl disulfide (DADS) and we looked at the changes with contact with stainless steel via GC-MS. We noticed that after contact with stainless steel, we saw an increase in the cyclic DADS (which doesn't smell like the original DADS), but we couldn't duplicate the results when we used a pure synthetic DADS. By the time I left the project, we were unable to conclude if it was DADS or allicin (the DADS precursor) that was technically cyclizing, but did definitely see a growth of the cyclic peak after stainless steel contact via crushing the garlic cloves with a stainless steel mortar and pestle v. a ceramic m&p. There may be something in the whole clove that aids in degrading the smell compound, but I didn't get to research it any further. There are some papers on the topic in the literature, but they are quite old and my prof and I had some questions with their experimental set up, so I'd take them with a grain a salt! Hopefully this helps a bit with your investigation :)

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    Replies
    1. Really interesting, thanks, Are you on twitter, I'll post a link to your comment with a credit to you.

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