Have we ever been surprised to find a yule log as a dessert on end-of-year tables? The tradition is so well anchored that it trivializes what could cause surprise. The opportunity to sow confusion on the plate extends throughout the year, in less expected forms. In fashionable restaurants or pastry shops, but especially on Pinterest, Instagram and in television competitions, trompe-l’oeil makes its show, its cooking showsometimes its food porn show. Welcome to a world where what you see is not what you believe, where what makes you salivate – but also grimace – differs from what you will taste. “Some chefs have decided to play on our visual perception by highlighting trompe-l’oeil: through fruit pastries in the shape of a fruit to return to the very essence of taste, or even edible creations in the shape of inedible objects, observes Marion Thilliou, author of How I tasted my cake, when our senses explain it to us (First, 2021).
At this little game, some outdo themselves. This is the case with British pastry chef Ben Churchill, who mixes optical illusion and a touch of provocation. Among the emblematic creations of this self-proclaimed “food illusionist”, a dish sponge made of a yellow sponge cake with olive oil, a lime scraper and a white foam, or an edible ashtray combining ash meringue powder and chocolate butts more real than nature… You Would you like a spoonful again? Less trashy and more playful, the creations of the Italian Matteo Stucchi (@idolcidigulliver on Instagram) transpose very real cakes into a miniature world recreating scenes from everyday life: a large tiramisu turns into a construction site or swimming pool, a vertical waffle into a multi-storey building… A facetious staging, less stunning but also less confusing than the previous one.
To eat the inedible
Fans of the cooking show “Top Chef” – whose new season begins on Wednesday February 16 – remember a test broadcast in 2021: during a challenge aimed at “to eat the inedible”, the candidates had proposed similar sponges and ashtrays, wiser candles and candlesticks, but also a more than realistic toilet bowl, the composition of which I will spare you. By comparison, the bloody fingers (Knacki with ketchup), licorice spiders and ghost bananas concocted by children for Halloween are considered the tastiest cuteness.
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