Do you judge people who obsess over pumpkin spice?
....It’s important to remember that Pumpkin Spice is not only a highly divisive flavor, but that the “pumpkin” part of Pumpkin Spice is almost beside the point. “Pumpkin doesn’t really taste like much,” professional flavorist Marie Wright told The Takeout last year.
“But pumpkin spice is a comfort flavor, a nostalgic flavor... cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, cloves, and good pumpkin spice has allspice as well.” In short, Pumpkin Spice is all about how the pumpkin is dressed—if there’s any pumpkin present at all, which isn’t necessarily the case.
When it comes to this latest heat-and-eat product, it’s clear that “Pumpkin Spice” aims to supply a general feeling more than any specific flavor profile. In a list of more than 30 ingredients on the Pumpkin Spice Nissin Cup Noodles nutrition label, both sugar and brown sugar pop up as ingredients well before anything else we associate with Pumpkin Spice flavor. In fact, the unspecified ingredient “spice” shows up third to last in the list, and “powdered pumpkin” is only slightly ahead of that.
In our eager discussion of what these noodles might taste like, our staff was split on whether the product would attempt an all-out sickly cinnamon-y sweetness in an uncanny impersonation of a Starbucks #PSL, or take a more culinary approach, marketing itself as “Pumpkin Spice” while aiming instead for the flavors of a more savory pumpkin curry. Neither guess was right—but also, both were.
Nissin has, it seems, attempted to split the difference between the two. If you’re really focused, you can detect the onion power, garlic powder, and paprika peeking out from the jumble of ingredients with every bite, colliding with the pumpkin and the sugars to form a confusing licorice-like note that hangs around as an aftertaste.
Cinnamon isn’t present on the label, but the idea of cinnamon comes through via some combination of sweet tapioca starch, corn syrup solids, and, I dunno... the egg white? There’s a lot of alchemy inside this cup that I’m not qualified to speak on............
https://thetakeout.com/pumpkin-spice-nissin-cup-noodles-review-1847423271
....It’s important to remember that Pumpkin Spice is not only a highly divisive flavor, but that the “pumpkin” part of Pumpkin Spice is almost beside the point. “Pumpkin doesn’t really taste like much,” professional flavorist Marie Wright told The Takeout last year.
“But pumpkin spice is a comfort flavor, a nostalgic flavor... cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, cloves, and good pumpkin spice has allspice as well.” In short, Pumpkin Spice is all about how the pumpkin is dressed—if there’s any pumpkin present at all, which isn’t necessarily the case.
When it comes to this latest heat-and-eat product, it’s clear that “Pumpkin Spice” aims to supply a general feeling more than any specific flavor profile. In a list of more than 30 ingredients on the Pumpkin Spice Nissin Cup Noodles nutrition label, both sugar and brown sugar pop up as ingredients well before anything else we associate with Pumpkin Spice flavor. In fact, the unspecified ingredient “spice” shows up third to last in the list, and “powdered pumpkin” is only slightly ahead of that.
In our eager discussion of what these noodles might taste like, our staff was split on whether the product would attempt an all-out sickly cinnamon-y sweetness in an uncanny impersonation of a Starbucks #PSL, or take a more culinary approach, marketing itself as “Pumpkin Spice” while aiming instead for the flavors of a more savory pumpkin curry. Neither guess was right—but also, both were.
Nissin has, it seems, attempted to split the difference between the two. If you’re really focused, you can detect the onion power, garlic powder, and paprika peeking out from the jumble of ingredients with every bite, colliding with the pumpkin and the sugars to form a confusing licorice-like note that hangs around as an aftertaste.
Cinnamon isn’t present on the label, but the idea of cinnamon comes through via some combination of sweet tapioca starch, corn syrup solids, and, I dunno... the egg white? There’s a lot of alchemy inside this cup that I’m not qualified to speak on............
https://thetakeout.com/pumpkin-spice-nissin-cup-noodles-review-1847423271