Bite into something spicy, and your pain has just begun, the spice settles into your mouth, and you’re in for a long, painful ride. You can always wait for the spice to recede, but there has to be another way. Before you start gulping down milk, try this trick first.
What is this beat-the-heat hack, may you ask? Well, it’s bread, soft white bread specifically. Yes, that soft spongy sweet bread is your solution to beating the fiery mouth heat.
Now you may be thinking, wait, what about milk? Milk is considered the universal coolant, the firefighter in a glass that puts out the heat, but it can’t remove the capsaicin. Instead of eliminating the heat, milk simply covers the burn without removing the pain.
Then why do people swear by milk? Mixture suppression might be the cause why skim milk reduces spice burn. The reason is something you might not expect – sugar. In this study, it proposed that when flavors are mixed, sweetness is the least suppressed flavor and the most potent suppressor of other flavors. So what does this mean in a nutshell? When sweetness pairs with another flavor (like spiciness), the sweetness will overpower the taste receptors, the overpowering sweetness essentially diminishes the power of the spiciness. So when it comes to milk, its proteins and the viscosity act like a burn lotion to rub over the heat, but it doesn’t remove the heat, and you still digest the spicy flavors (which will still be painful later on).
Here is where bread shines, at the first sign of a spice burn, pat your mouth with a slice of the soft, sweet bread. This type of bread acts like a paper towel, absorbing the capsaicin and removing it from the taste bud receptors. There are sugars in bread that will work as milk does and suppress the spice with sweetness.
Again even though you can’t be picky, especially in a spice emergency, it’s best to use some soft and sweet white bread. With a pillowy absorbent texture and a sweet taste, it does its best to reduce and remove the pain.