Chef: This mussel recipe's first step is to sprinkle the live mussels with cornmeal. The cornmeal is used to clean t...

shunhe on May 19, 2020

Hi @jingjingxiao11111@gmail.com,

Thanks for the question! So first, as to what the stimulus is asking. We have a chef who’s describing a recipe for mussels that she cooks. She first tells us that the first step is normally to sprinkle the live mussels with cornmeal, which cleans them out by making them eject sand. But the chef does not have to do this, because the mussels available at seafood markets don’t have sand.

Now the question is asking us for an assumption required by the chef’s argument. And this is something that we can reasonably anticipate. The chef says that she doesn’t have to sprinkle her mussels, since seafood market mussels don’t have sand. What is something the chef’s assuming? She’s assuming that her mussels are seafood market mussels! If they weren’t, then it might be the case that they do have sand, and she’ll still need to sprinkle them. And this is what (E) tells us: the chef is using mussels from a seafood market.

Hope this helps! Feel free to ask any other questions that you might have.

jingjingxiao11111@gmail.com on October 8, 2020

Thank you for your response Shunhe! I thought B was the correct answer because he must assume sand is the only contamination that mussels have because sprinkling cornmeal on mussels is to get rid off contaminations such as sand. I thought B was correct because the negation of B namely there are other contamination besides sand would mean the chef must spray the mussels with cornmeal to get rid off contaminants. Thank you. Please explain why B is wrong?

Emil-Kunkin on October 30, 2023

B is wrong because the author doesn't have to believe there are no contaminants other than sand. If they are contaminated by E. coli., the cornstarch wouldn't do anything to get rid of it, and the conclusion that no cornstarch is needed would still stand.