Cohn, Jacob. The Royal Table - VWC: Faculty/Staff Web

94 THE ROYAL TABLE
meat; but the points of contact should be rinsed with cold
water. 2* Hot meat or cheese should be kept from touching
bread, for such bread can then be used only with the kind
of food which it has come into contact. 25 Cold meat which
has fallen into cold milk should be immediately removed
and rinsed, and both the meat and the milk may be used
thereafter. When both are hot, both become inedible by
this contact. When only one of them is hot, a principle
known as "the lower conquers" (in: fiNDD) comes into
play. According to this principle, it is supposed that
when one substance falls into another, the lower imparts
its temperature to the one above. Thus, when cold meat
falls into hot milk, or when cold milk falls upon hot meat,
the lower of the two heats the higher, and the mixture is
judged
as a combination of hot milk and hot meat and is
prohibited. But when hot meat falls into cold milk or hot
milk drops upon cold meat, all of it may be eaten. How-
ever, it is customary to pare the meat at the point where
it came in contact with the milk (fiS^p), 26
If a piece of
cold meat falls into hot milk, and is immediately removed,
the milk may be salvaged if the volume of the milk is
sixty times that of the meat; likewise hot meat upon which
a drop of milk has chanced to fall does not become unfit
in all cases: if the piece is sixty times as large as the drop
of milk, it may be used, providing the point of contact
is pared. 27
Accidents of the type described above occur most fre-
quently while cooking. Should a drop of milk fall into a
pot of meat-soup, the pot should be immediately stirred,
and the contents of the entire pot counted toward the
34 Y. D. 91, i.
M Y. D. 91, 3.
28 Pesachim 76b, Y. D ibid. 4.
27 Y. D. ibid.