"Nick Odell" wrote in message
...

Alternatively a little bit of salty water in the system? There's
"incomplete combustion" yellow (daffodil?), and Sodium yellow (a bit
darker and closer to orange, like old fashioned low pressure sodium
lights). Actually you don't need salty water, there will very likely be
dried salt in the burners, just a few droplets of water to mobilise it?

Could be: I had just poured the pasta into the boiling salty water. But
it's not something I've noticed before and, for the avoidance of doubt, I
have boiled pasta in salty water on that stove before

It didn't do it again. Still, it gave me an excuse to clean all the parts,
dry them and put them back together and it is still working just as it
always has. Just one of those things, eh?


When a pan of salty water boiled over, it affected all the burners of the
hob and also the gas fire in the next room (and maybe the boiler - can't see
the flame). I wonder if some water managed to flow backwards down the pipe
beyond the hob to a common feed for hob, gas fire and boiler. It took a
couple of weeks to go away, even though I cleaned all the burners as soon as
it happened.

It only take minuscule amounts of salt to tint the flame: I remember from
chemistry that the flame test is very sensitive.

I've noticed that fir cones dipped in copper sulphate (sold to brighten up
an open fire or wood-burning stove) cause *all* the flames to go blue, not
just the flames from the cones themselves.