JimLane wrote:

> Here's the only relevant thing Bob wrote in reply to what brought me
> into this discussion:

Are you being deliberately obtuse? Can you not see that your "show me
some science" whine has been answered? Can you not see that your
request for empirical information has been satisfied?

> > Unless the recipe demands a great deal of butter *and* a great deal
> of > salt, my experience is that it doesn't matter whether the butter is
> > salted or not. And in the instance of the hypothetical recipe cited,
> a > minor adjustment solves the whole "problem."
>
> And that adjustment might come after someone else

Why must it be someone else?

> has tasted and
> commented on the dish, perhaps, "Bob, this is a bit salty for me."

Oh, wait. JimLane's newest twist is that if *anyone* can discern a
single, lonely molecule of salinity, the whole thing of "salted butter
won't make much of a difference in the real world" is null, void and
probably a commie plot.

Poor JimLane seems to want absolute assertion at which point he'll
still say, "I can tell the difference."

> The question is, is this possible because of using salted vs unsalted
> butter? Could that difference be enough to tip a dish into the "salty"
> side of taste for some people?
>
> You have been saying "absolutely no way."

Really? I said that? I used the word "absolutely?" I said that in my
experience it wouldn't. I say that in the experience of a dozen people
who participated in a specific, informal experiment it didn't. I'm
saying that the paper I cited (Sunday morning and again Sunday
evening) said there were thresholds below which people couldn't even
perceive salinity and the amounts were of the orders of magnitude used
in recipes.

> I have been saying prove that
> with replicable research, not opinion, not anecdotal stories.

I did. You're still asking for the information you've already been
given. But no matter what, it won't change your mind since you say you
can taste salt at extremely low concentrations.

> What peer-reviewed research do you have on people's perceptions of taste
> that proves your point - that this can make no difference at all?

You're trying to make my position be absolute. It isn't, of course
because finally it's either a matter of a person's personal taste
perception or what *they say* to some researcher. There is no
objective measurement possible.

Did this part of the message I sent at 7:41 Sunday morning get past
you? You're replying to it, how could you have missed it so completely?

<<<<<<<<<<<<begin quote >>>>>>>>>
And here's some honest-to-god science with statistics and charts and
technical terms like "moles' and other cool stuff.
<http://lib.tmd.ac.jp/jmd/5001/14_ohno.pdf> Look at the
concentrations of saline solutions that were undetectable. See the
pretty lines in the perceptivity charts. Based on their conclusions,
you'll want to forego brushing your tongue before eating. Dentures
won't matter for salinity, only bitterness. These were elderly
subjects with reduced sensitivity from what they should have been able
to perceive when younger. But the mean thresholds of perceptivity is
rather higher than I would have thought.

Here's what a molar solution is about
<http://www.public.iastate.edu/~bkh/teaching/molarity.pdf>

A molar solution of salt would be 58.44 grams of salt in enough liquid
to make a liter. How much salt was in each solution? Well, to quote
myself, "A tablespoon of table salt weighs right at 0.6 ounces or 16.8
grams. A tablespoon is 3 teaspoons of salt which weigh 5.6 grams each."

1= 0.0008 M solution = 0.047 g
2= 0.0017 = 0.099 g
3= 0.0033 = 0.193 g
4= 0.0067 = 0.392 g
5= 0.0134 = 0.783 g
6= 0.0267 = 1.560 g
7= 0.0535 = 3.127 g

Note the mean thresholds for perceiving salinity on page 4. Do the
math. Are we done with this now?
<<<<<<<< end quote >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

We're done with this now, JimLane. I'm not going to continue with this
sort of dissembling from you. I've answered every question you've
asked, explained what I did, what the intentions were, and explained
from the principle under which it was formulated to the instance. I've
stated my premises, thinking, positions, and third-party data and
restated them in different words hoping you'd grasp it. If you still
want to know about the subject, and it doesn't seem that it's the
case, I suggest you go looking by yourself. I'm confident that no
matter what you find, it will either be "insufficient" or it will
confirm what you already "know."

Bob