- Question: Why do we apply the rule of “Trei mashehu lo amrinan” that little bits don’t transfer twice when it comes to foods but not when it comes to vessels like a stirring spoon?
Background:
A. The Mishna Berura (467:9:37) says, If a ladle stirred soup that had a cracked kernel of barley found inside it on Pesach while piping hot then you use the ladle to stir another boiling hot pot it ruins all the food in the pot and the pot because since it can prohibit with even a little bit then we assume even that little bit of taste went out of the spoon and into the next pot of soup.
B. The Shaar Hatzion (67) says this only applies by a spoon transferring from liquid to liquid but if that cracked barley kernel fell on a piece of hot meat and then that hot meat got mixed up with other hot solid foods like vegetables and there is a majority to nullify its taste, then as long as you can see and take out that solid piece of meat which had the chometz absorbed in it, then everything else is permitted at least to get benefit from and even to eat if not eating it would detract from the joy of Yom Tov.
C. The Taz (17) asks why the rule that little bits of taste don’t transfer twice apply to the spoon mixing two pots of soup just as it applies to the food.
D. Food has their own tastes absorbed in it but spoons don’t have their own tastes absorbed in them.
Answer: The Dirshu Mishna Berura note 41 quotes the Elya Rabba (447:1) saying that a little bit [of taste] absorbed in a spoon is different from a little bit absorbed in a solid food substance, for when it is absorbed in food the [foreign taste] clings to it and does not get spit out again from it and therefore we can apply the rule of “trei mashehu lo amrinan” but when absorbed in a spoon, since the spoon does not have its own taste, then the [chometz taste that was absorbed] does not cling to it so it then gets spit out into the other pot [the spoon was mixing.]