A materials science approach is applied to understanding the removal of starchy soils from crockery in a dishwasher. Specifically, the action of hydration and the role of alkalinity in reducing the cohesion of a retrograded Cream-of-Wheat soil are studied using the rigidity modulus of the soil as a measure of cohesive strength. Cream-of-Wheat gels prepared undersaturated with water were exposed to simple wash liquors buffered in the alkaline pH range. The gain in water content by the gel was analyzed via a differential and an integral approach, both treating the process of swelling with wash liquor as a one-dimensional diffusion problem. A phenomenological diffusion coefficient describing the swelling process is determined as 3 x 10(-11) m(2) s(-1) at pH 10 and 10(-10) m(2) s(-1) at pH 12. The ingress of alkalinity into the soil was followed by having an acid/base color indicator uniformly distributed throughout the gel. Treating the progress of the color change into the soil as one-dimensional diffusion, diffusion coefficients were obtained for the ingress of alkalinity : 10(-9) m(2) s(-1) at pH 10 and 3 x 10(-9) m(2) s(-1) at pH 12. The decay in the soil layer cohesion with exposure to wash liquor occurs on a time scale too rapid to be related to the swelling process but in keeping with that of alkaline ingress. The penetrating hydroxyl ions deprotonate a portion of the hydroxyl groups which cross-link starch, making the soil more easily removed by mechanical forces in a dishwasher.