Marlene Parrish - What Einstein Told His Cook 2

I have always been suspicious of the club soda remedy, which is touted more highly than any other. I just couldn’t see any chemical reason for it to work, so I decided to test it. (The trouble with this world is that people go around telling other people what works for this or that, without anyone ever doing a careful experiment to see if it’s true.)

First, I treated a fresh wine stain on white cotton with plain carbonated water, or seltzer, known to chemists as carbonic acid. Being acidic, it did nothing to diminish the red color of the wine stain.

Then I tried the legendary club soda, which is carbonated water with a small amount of added sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) and in some cases also a small amount of sodium citrate. Both of these chemicals reduce the acidity, but I found that the club soda was still slightly acidic and didn’t change the red color. It did zilch. So much for the many members of the Club Soda Club.

Well, what does work? A few years ago, researchers at the University of California, Davis—professor of enology (wine chemistry) Andrew L. Waterhouse and his student Natalie Ramirez—tested a variety of formulations, both commercial and homemade. Several commercial “wine stain remover” products failed miserably. But depending on the type of fabric and the age of the stain, generally good results were obtained with a 50–50 mixture of 3 percent hydrogen peroxide and a certain brand of liquid dishwashing detergent.

There is no need to mix up such a concoction and keep it around for emergencies; it doesn’t keep well anyway. But the hydrogen peroxide in the Davis tests gave me an important clue, because peroxides are bleaches, although much less potent than chlorine bleach, which might remove not only the stain but all the color in the fabric as well. Peroxides are what the detergent makers call “color-safe bleaches.” They oxidize the colored chemicals to colorless forms.

I decided to test several new products containing sodium percarbonate, a so-called addition product of sodium carbonate (washing soda) with hydrogen peroxide, which have come onto the market since the Davis experiments were done. I found that they work miraculously well on red wine stains.

I tested three of the percarbonate products that were available in my supermarket: Oxi Clean, Clorox Oxygen Action, and Shout Oxy Power. I sprinkled them (they’re all white powders) on wine-stained white cotton, sprayed them liberally with water to wet the powders and let them sit for about ten minutes.

As I watched, the highly alkaline sodium carbonate turned the stains blue, and then the hydrogen peroxide took over and bleached the blue color out almost completely. (Shout Oxy Power worked somewhat faster than the others.) I then threw the fabrics into the washing machine, percarbonate and all, and washed them with detergent. Not a trace of stain was left in any of them!

Sidebar Science: Electron kidnappers

IN CHEMISTRY,“oxidation” refers to a much broader class of reactions than the simple interaction of a substance with oxygen. In the more general sense, it refers to any reaction in which electrons are lost by an atom or molecule. Hydrogen peroxide and other peroxides are oxidizing agents that can snatch electrons away from the molecules of many other chemical compounds.

Now, colored chemical compounds are colored because their electrons absorb certain specific wavelengths or colors of light out of the daylight (a mixture of all visible wavelengths) that falls upon them, while reflecting all the remaining wavelengths back to our eyes. What we see, then, is reflected light that is missing a couple of the incident colors. For example, a daffodil petal absorbs some of the blue wavelengths out of the daylight, so it reflects back to us light that is deficient in blue, which we perceive as yellow. We then say that the flower itself “is yellow.” But if an oxidizing agent were to snatch away the blue-light-absorbing electrons, the yellow color would be gone. The flower would have been bleached.

So check the ingredient labels on cleaning products in the supermarket. If you see “sodium percarbonate,” buy it and keep it handy. It’s good for many other stain-removal jobs.

Save the club soda for your scotch.

A craven disclaimer: Stain removal can be challenging and not always predictable, depending on the exact nature of the staining substance, the age of the stain, and the type and color of the fabric. My tests were done on fresh merlot stains on plain white cotton. Never use any stain-removal technique—including the one above—without first testing it on an inconspicuous part of the tablecloth or garment.

How to remove a fresh red wine stain

Be prepared. Keep a cleaning product containing sodium percarbonate in the kitchen—for example, Oxi Clean, Clorox Oxygen Action, or Shout Oxy Power. These are all white powders.

Follow these steps:

1. Pour wine. Serve dinner. Enjoy food, wine, and merriment.

2. Watch in silent horror as guest spills red wine on tablecloth.

3. Without delay, blot excess wine with paper towels while telling the culprit not to worry and imagining him burning in Hell.

4. Sprinkle white percarbonate powder onto stained area.

5. Spray liberally with water (from a mister) to make a paste.

6. Allow paste to stand for 10 minutes while making small talk and imagining culprit burning in Hell.

7. At first opportunity, take tablecloth to washing machine, percarbonate paste and all.

8. Launder tablecloth as usual with normal amount of detergent.

9. Go to confession for your wicked thoughts.

Chapter Two

Down on the Farm

THE FARM IS where it all begins. The earth. The land. The soil.

Some nine thousand years ago, when we humans began to supplement our hunting-and-gathering existence with animal domestication and agriculture, we planted the seeds (to use a fitting metaphor) of modern farming. Although we still hunt and gather on the seas (see Chapter 6), the main source of virtually all human food is agriculture, farming the Good Earth to raise both crop and stock.

There are many kinds of farms. The greatest number by far raise grain (see Chapter 5), such as the rice, corn, and wheat that sustain nearly all of the world’s population. Others grow fruits (Chapter 4) and members of the catchall category we call vegetables (Chapter 3). Still others raise livestock for their meat (Chapter 7), their milk, or their eggs.

This chapter focuses on the last two: the products of dairy farms. There, the two fundamentals of animal existence, the life-initiating egg and the life-sustaining milk of mammals, are obtained from domesticated animals. We either consume them as is or transform them mechanically, chemically, or biologically into products such as butter and cheese and then incorporate them into hundreds of dishes throughout the world’s cuisines.

You will not find here the answer to a mystery that has haunted me for years, because I haven’t been able to find an answer: Why do we speak of dairy and eggs as if there were an obvious connection between them, as there is between fruits and vegetables or between meat and fish? A quick glance at the animals involved should convince even the most casual observer that cows and chickens really have little in common. The farmer has yet to be born who goes out in the morning to collect cow’s eggs and to milk the chickens.

Nevertheless, I shall perpetuate the “dairy and egg” association by treating them both within the same chapter.