The hydrophobic interior cavity of a self-assembled supramolecular assembly exploits the hydrophobic effect for the encapsulation of tertiary amides. Variable temperature 1H NMR experiments reveal that the free energy barrier for rotation around the C-N amide bond is lowered by up to 3.6 kcal/mol upon encapsulation. The hydrophobic cavity of the assembly is able to stabilize the less polar transition state of the amide rotation process. Carbon-13 labeling studies showed that the {sup 13}C NMR carbonyl resonance increases with temperature for the encapsulated amides which suggests that the assembly is able to favor a twisted for of the amide
