Smoke produced when cooking

Question

When cooking, you put edible oil like lard into a hot hollowware, and then smoke produced. The smoke is called what?        Soot, lampblack? Not likely.

Guest · Accepted Answer

It's called vapour (pronounced vey-per)

Jobb · Answer

I'm afraid people would misunderstand it as water vapour.

Paco2004 · Answer

Hi Jobb

'Vapor' is not always 'water vapor'. The word could mean also 'oil vapor'.

paco

CalifJim · Answer

I've never heard "vapor" used that way.  "water vapor" is my first association with "vapor".  I didn't know that smoke from oil had a different name than "smoke".

Jobb · Answer

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Guest · Answer

http://www.freshpatents.com/Automatic-fry-apparatus-dt20041007ptan20040194635.php

Second, oil vapor is produced when oil is heated. The people who are preparing fried foods involuntarily inhale considerable amount of cooking fumes during the cooking process. Oil vapor is harmful to human health and might pose long-term health threats to the people who expose themselves to oil vapor on a very regular base.

I don't if this 'oil vapor' is a common phrase.

Guest · Answer

If you're being descriptive about where it's coming from, why should anyone mistake it for water vapour?

Vapour: a substance in the gaseous state as distinguished from the liquid or solid state

CalifJim · Answer

Well, you learn something new every day, as they say!

Before this, I had never heard of oil vapor. Now I need to worry about it! Thanks! (I guess.

)

But from this description I still have the impression that the "fumes" or "vapor" are not visible to the cook, but my impression is that "smoke" would be something visible. I get the impression that if I were cooking with, let's say, olive oil, the wonderful smell is from the oil vapor, but if the oil gets too hot and begins to burn, it will give off visible smoke, which is not at all so wonderful.

(Smoke is not a gaseous state of matter - it's solid particles suspended in a gas (air).)

So I suppose the question is still whether "smoke" can accurately be called "vapor", no matter what its source.

CJ

Paco2004 · Answer

CJ

My little dictionary (Oxford WordPower) defines "vapour/vapor" as;
substance made of very small drops of liquid which hang together in the air like a cloud or mist.

paco

Jobb · Answer

A chemical change takes place in (olive) oil when it burns. And because it burns, it becomes smoke.

Edible oil, like olive oil, is not volatile, so it cannot become vapour. What you see in cooking is smoke, not vapour.

Jobb

Smoke produced when cooking

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