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辛みがついてピーマンっぽさが 消えて助かるよ！

It gave it some spice and toned down the pepper flavor!

Here, the subject of 消えて助かる seems to be the inanimate peppery flavor. But I thought て助かる is used when someone got the benefit of something, which implies it has to be a sentient subject.

What's a good way to understand this sentence?

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One way to understand is to think the subject of 消えて is ピーマンぽさ, and that of 助かる is the speaker. So literally the sentence means I am saved by the hotness added (to the food) and the pepper-ishness disappearing.

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    But the predicate 消えて助かる already has one subject, ピーマンっぽさ (pepperiness), since it's followed by が, right? Isn't a predicate restricted to only have 1 subject? How would the 2 additional subjects fit into the same predicate? (Let's ignore the first clause 辛みがついて for simplicity.)
    – max
    Commented Mar 31, 2022 at 15:30
  • @max: The ～て[OTHER VERB] construction sometimes means the following verb is part of the same clause, but sometimes the ～て concludes the preceding clause, and the [OTHER VERB] is part of a new statement. Your sentence is an example of this second pattern -- so 消えて助かる are two separate verb statements, with two separate subjects.
    – Eiríkr Útlendi
    Commented Mar 31, 2022 at 16:36
  • @max Ah right, I corrected it regarding the subject. As for the second question, this is 消えて（私が）助かる. It is not uncommon; 薬を飲んで（病気が）直った. 雲が取れて（空が）明るくなった.
    – sundowner
    Commented Mar 31, 2022 at 21:59

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