Cooking oil that jumps from a frying pan in use and over time accumulates around the frying pan on a wooden surface is sticky and hard to remove.

My question is why. Why is it hard to remove? What is the chemistry behind it? Does it bond with the wood somehow? If so, how is it different from oil used to give the wood a protective coating? Why is one sticky and the other not sticky?


This site explains the use of oil on wood fairly well:


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  • $\begingroup$ I know this is old, but it seems non-trivial to simply scrub off and remove with "soap and water". This leads me to believe that even non-drying oils undergo some chemical process that make it more sticky, without making it completely solid like a drying oil. $\endgroup$ – AttributedTensorField Jun 4 '16 at 12:23

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