There's A Reason Everyone's So Freaked Out By This Clear Pumpkin Pie
Leave it to Alinea to turn a traditional pumpkin pie into a surrealist dream.
The three Michelin-starred Chicago restaurant debuted a clear miniature pumpkin pie in September, and people are just now freaking out about it.
A post shared by Simon Davies (@simon.a.davies) on Sep 24, 2017 at 1:25pm PDT
A post shared by Simon Davies (@simon.a.davies) on Oct 27, 2017 at 1:44pm PDT
The creation isclearly unsettling for some Twitter users:
DOG... a chef really made clear pumpkin pie.
First of all, pumpkin pie is trash offtop... making it see through won't make it taste better pic.twitter.com/Ud9ejS1oJf— Cliff Skighwalker (@Skighwalker) October 26, 2017
*screams internally* pic.twitter.com/5uRKZnQs6I
— Richie Nakano (@linecook) October 22, 2017
Ah yes, for those folks who mourned the loss of Crystal Pepsi
— Keiko Zoll (@KeikoZoll) October 27, 2017
That should be in the trash.
— P3nny Dr3dful (@p3nny_dr3dful) October 28, 2017
We got clear pumpkin pie being made and we still can’t even get Donald Trump impeached. Can we focus on the priorities first? pic.twitter.com/47RDDXqD7U
— Kenyon Dixon (@kennygotsoul) October 27, 2017
Alinea’s executive chef Mike Bagale and chef de cuisine Simon Davies called the pie a “distillation of pumpkin pie” in an interview with Vogue. But what exactly does that mean, in terms that we can understand?
The crust is made of a classic pâte brisée (butter crust), so the filling is where things get scientific. Alinea heats up a mixture of cooked pumpkin, ginger powder, cinnamon, cloves and sweetened condensed milk. The vapors from the heated mixture eventually condense into colorless droplets, which then possess the aromatics of pumpkin pie. (Alinea uses a machine called a “rotary evaporator” to do this — it’s not done in your average pot.) A puddle of the clear condensation is then mixed with gelatin to create the filling. The result? All the flavors of pumpkin pie filling, with a totally different look.
Jen Tran, an Instagram user who has tried the pie, described the texture as, “Not too jello-like, similar to the smooth consistency of regular pumpkin pie. Tasted like normal, but the clear part totally messes with your mind!”
A post shared by Jen Tran (@jentranphilly) on Oct 26, 2017 at 5:19pm PDT
There’s a reason it messes with your mind. One key psychological aspect of eating involves color and perception.
Melanie Mühl and Diana Von Kopp, authors of “How We Eat And Think With Our Stomach,” explain that “we instinctively recoil from food that has the ‘wrong’ color. Because vision is our dominant sensory input, a change in a food’s color can overwhelm our other senses and lead to a false positive for taste.”
In other words, visual cues affect how we perceive taste, which explains why Crystal Pepsi bombed in the ’90s, and why some wine experts can’t correctly identify white wine when red dye has been added to it.
Traditional pumpkin pie might be a whole lot easier to make, but if you really want to mess with your guests’ minds this Thanksgiving, try making Alinea’s recipe.
This article originally appeared on HuffPost.