I was finishing a jar of extremely hot peppers (7 pot primos) that I had fermenting on Thanksgiving day. I made a hot sauce with them and cantaloupe. I had them in a pan at a low simmer to meld the flavors. The problem was the steam coming off was potent as hell. It filled the house when everyone was arriving and coughing from the hot sauce in the air, me included. We had to open all the windows, dig out the fans to get it out of the house, freezing everyone in the process.
Oh we’d also “tested” not that long before by burning some other food. Worked fine then.
There are two main types of smoke detectors, and one works better for smoldering fires (photoelectric), while the other works better for rapidly growing fires (ionization). IDK how different the two food-burning incidents are, but there is a Technology Connections video on youtube that goes into more detail on the subject. Fun fact: smoke alarms with photoelectric detectors have been growing in popularity, as has making everything in our homes out of plastic and other synthetic materials, which burn much more quickly than older materials, thus lessening the chance of house fires smoldering long enough for the smoke alarm to react before everything is engulfed in flames. Hurray for progress! Although, ionization-type detectors are much more likely to give false positives, which increases the likelihood that they will get disabled by the homeowner/tenant, and you definitely don’t want that.