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Made my first pecan pie, and after cutting into it I have a question for any fellow physics and/or baking enthusiasts out there.
The batter is poured over the pecans and remains there before baking, but afterwards the pecans are exclusively at the top of the pie. The batter expands in volume, becoming less dense, yet sits below all the same.
Presumably this is still a density-based process, but how does that occur given the batter's decrease in density over the course of baking?
Following up on this for the benefit of likely no one but myself (
), now that med school finals have ended I’ve returned to this question.
My current hypothesis is that the batter’s viscosity is high enough that pecans, despite being less dense, remain on the bottom of the pie tin before baking.
Heating then renders the batter sufficiently less viscous before it fixes that the pecans rise to the top, and remain there due to density lower than the batter’s at any point before solidification.
Genuinely tempted to make a bunch of pecan pies for the purpose of experimental measurements. It should be feasible to remove them at sequential time points while baking and then carefully bisect them to observe pecan distribution.
It wouldn’t waste any food since I could just return them to the oven after collecting the data. However, I will also probably eat all of them, because I like pecan pie too much.
Given the human subject risk, I’ll need to take it up with the IRB. 