Crumb

A crumb is a small piece of food that has left a larger piece of food. Crumbs are produced by bread, biscuits, cake and toast, and are found on plates, keyboards, sofas and, for reasons physics cannot fully explain, inside socks.^[1]

There is no agreed minimum size for a crumb. Anything smaller than a crumb is known as a smaller crumb, a system that continues all the way down.

Conservation of crumbs

Crumbs obey the Law of Conservation of Crumbs, which states that the number of crumbs on a table cannot be reduced by wiping it, only rearranged. In a 2007 experiment the same kitchen table was wiped 600 times, and every crumb was later recovered from the floor, the chairs or the person doing the wiping. One crumb was never accounted for. It turned up three years later in the sugar bowl.^[2]

Output by food

• Toast: about 1,200 crumbs per slice, all landing butter side down.
• Croissant: more crumbs than croissant; experts now regard the croissant as a crumb delivery system.^[3]
• Cake: few crumbs, as these are eaten first.
• Rice cake: technically one large crumb.

In bed

Eating in bed produces crumbs that cannot be seen and can only be felt, usually at about 2 a.m. The leading theory is that bed crumbs are not new crumbs at all but old crumbs returning home.

See also

• Toast – a leading producer
• Sandwich – a crumb factory with a filling
• Sock – an unexplained destination

References

1. Loaf, L. (2007). Six Hundred Wipes. Breadbin Press.
2. Sweep, D. (2010). “The Sugar Bowl Crumb”. Kitchen Physics Letters 2: 1.
3. Flake, C. (2012). “The Croissant as Delivery System”. Pastry Studies 4: 11.