Mishnah 7 in the tenth chapter of Tractate Terumos continues the discussion of the transfer of taste from a forbidden food to a permitted one. The case here is pickling, and more specifically the pickling of olives: if olives of chullin and olives of Terumah were pickled together, must we be concerned that the taste of the Terumah olives was absorbed into the chullin olives, thereby making them too restricted and edible only by a kohen?
The guiding principle of the Mishnah:
The Mishnah works with one simple principle, unique to olives: a whole olive, one that has not been squeezed or crushed, resists absorbing taste. Therefore whole chullin olives that are pickled in salt water or brine do not absorb taste, whereas olives that were crushed or bruised in any way do absorb taste.
The words of the Mishnah and the details of the cases:
"Zeisei chullin shekvashan im zeisei Terumah" - chullin olives that were pickled in the same salt water together with Terumah olives.
"Petzu'ei chullin im petzu'ei Terumah" - 'petzu'ei' comes from the word for bruising: an olive that was pounded, broken or crushed. Here the case is bruised chullin olives sitting together with bruised Terumah olives.
"Petzu'ei chullin im shleimei Terumah" - the chullin olives were crushed, while the Terumah olives with them remained whole.
"O b'mei Terumah" - crushed chullin olives that are soaking in the pickling liquid alone. That is, the very brine in which Terumah olives had previously been pickled: the olives themselves have already been removed from the liquid, but their taste was absorbed into the brine that remains.
In all of these cases the ruling is "assur" - forbidden: since the chullin olives were bruised, they absorbed a bit of the taste of the Terumah, and they are therefore forbidden.
"Aval shleimei chullin im petzu'ei Terumah - mutar":
Whole chullin olives, which were never pounded or pressed, do not absorb taste. For this reason it makes no difference if they are sitting in the pickling jar together with bruised Terumah olives, which release more taste, and certainly not when the Terumah olives are whole. We assume that the taste of the Terumah was not absorbed into the whole olive, and therefore it retains its status of chullin and is permitted to anyone.
In summary: This Mishnah establishes that an olive's capacity to absorb taste depends on its physical condition: chullin olives that were bruised absorb the taste of the Terumah and become forbidden, whether they were pickled with bruised Terumah olives, with whole ones, or whether they merely soaked in Terumah liquid alone; whole chullin olives, on the other hand, do not absorb taste at all and remain permitted in every case.