[Sca-cooks] To oil or not to oil?

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

On Oct 2, 2005, at 11:14 PM, UlfR wrote:

> otsisto <otsisto at socket.net> [2005.10.03] wrote:
>
>> Linseed is not a food safe oil.
>>
>
> Are you certain? I've been under the impression that is was.
>
> UlfR

If you take fresh, perfectly edible linseeds and squeeze the oil out  
of them, that's one thing, but bottled linseed oil can become rancid  
easily. This is why woodworkers sometimes use boiled linseed oil  
(essentially encouraged to become rancid) to treat wood in lieu of  
things like polyurethane -- the observation of such phenomena has  
led, among other things, to the development of petroleum-based  
plastics. So, while I don't think linseed oil, per se, is dangerous,  
it has a lot of technological baggage attached to it, and I would not  
be at all surprised if the concept bothered some people.

Also, another consideration is that that things described as "food  
safe" are actively so. Food scientists, the US Food and Drug  
Administration, and people like that, don't necessarily think in  
terms of "items that have not yet been proven safe and approved for  
human consumption". These are still relatively new concepts, and I  
expect that if an item falls outside of the list of 26,000 (or  
however many it is currently) "food safe" items, it is then  
officially not food safe, until such future time that a specific  
determination is made. "Not food safe" is a default setting.

I expect SCAdians have more than their fair share of "not food safe"  
items in their kitchens ;-)

Adamantius





"S'ils n'ont pas de pain, vous fait-on dire, qu'ils  mangent de la  
brioche!" / "If there's no bread to be had, one has to say, let them  
eat cake!"
     -- attributed to an unnamed noblewoman by Jean-Jacques Rousseau,  
"Confessions", 1782

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