Is there a combination of ingredients that will chemically interact to create poison? I am interested in whether this possible with any common preparation method (e.g. via cooking, blending, whisking, microwaving) but not by burning the food or leaving the food out to be contaminated by bacteria. I am interested in any ingredients that on their own are approved by some country's government as safe.
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1@Jolenealaska, a tiny bit too simple, see answer below. We discussed that in chat last fall, iirc.– Stephie ♦Commented May 19, 2016 at 12:01
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Not a poison : but acids + bases might make for some discomfort. (along w/ poprocks + soda)– JoeCommented May 19, 2016 at 16:02
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1 Answer
Basically everything at all normal is safe.
There is a mushroom that gets toxic if combined with alcohol, but alcohol itself isn't 100% safe and if you're gathering wild mushrooms you need to be safety conscious, so it's not really something you could run into by accident or with storebought ingredients.
Relevant paragraph from Wikipedia
Consuming Coprinopsis atramentaria within a few hours of alcohol results in a "disulfiram syndrome". This interaction has only been known since the early part of the twentieth century. Symptoms include facial reddening, nausea, vomiting, malaise, agitation, palpitations and tingling in limbs, and arise five to ten minutes after consumption of alcohol. If no more alcohol is consumed, they will generally subside over two or three hours. Symptom severity is proportional to the amount of alcohol consumed, becoming evident when blood alcohol concentration reaches 5 mg/dL, and prominent at concentrations of 50–100 mg/dL. Disulfiram has, however, been known to cause myocardial infarction (heart attack). The symptoms can occur if even a small amount of alcohol is consumed up to three days after eating the mushrooms, although they are milder as more time passes. Rarely, a cardiac arrhythmia, such as atrial fibrillation on top of supraventricular tachycardia, may develop.
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That's the case for the whole coprinus family to various degrees and a few others. Also note that this is not a poison per se, but that coprine stops the metabolism of alcohol.– Stephie ♦Commented May 19, 2016 at 11:58
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To be fair, alcohol on its own is only sometimes safe, and you always have to be careful with wild mushrooms, so this still leaves us with no examples in which both ingredients are thought of as completely safe.– Cascabel ♦Commented May 19, 2016 at 14:32
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@Jefromi, although I would have liked an answer that uses food that is safer than alcohol, this answers the question as it is stated, hence I accepted it. (On second thought, most countries do not rate alcohol as safe for children to drink, so it is debatable whether this answers my question). Commented May 20, 2016 at 2:17
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@StrategyThinker I think it's a useful answer too, I'm mostly just saying that, if this is the best we can come up with, then the overall answer is basically no, nothing you mix will be poisonous.– Cascabel ♦Commented May 20, 2016 at 3:33
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2I've edited this to present the overall picture rather than just the one example, so that it's potentially helpful for folks being paranoid about accidentally poisoning themselves with routine cooking.– Cascabel ♦Commented May 21, 2016 at 16:09