Continuing our Science of Pie adventure, we’ve invited Elsbeth Sites of Team Chia to share her pie science project, which examines the use of a very unconventional thickener to tune the viscosity of pie filling. Elsbeth is an undergraduate student of physiological sciences at UCLA who is passionate about food and writing, especially writing about food.
Have you ever baked a lovely pie, sliced it and placed it gently on your best dessert plates, then watched in despair as the filling fled its warm crust and bled all over the dish? This common and unfortunate experience led our team to investigate the viscosity of pie filling. We hoped to discover a way to produce a pie of perfect viscosity that upon slicing, would not spread over the plate too far, nor be too gelatinous. Most pies contain cornstarch to thicken their fillings. To make our project unique and to put a modern and healthy twist on our pie, we replaced starch with the trendy new superfood: chia seeds.
The outside of the chia seed contains large fibrous molecules called polysaccharides. When the seed is wet, these molecules are exuded from the seed and trap liquid. This allows the seed to hold approximately nine times its own weight in water, causing a bead of gel to form around the seed [1].
