Introducing: Flucker

Ruin your Vitamix with xanthan gum

I have long had a fixation with “Frankenfood,” by which I mean, the sort of food that a doctor would eat. I was able to indulge this recently for Serious Eats, where I wrote about the merits of xanthan gum.

It is unfashionable, in this era of preoccupation with ultra-processed foods and Kennedys, Jr., to promote mysterious powders and gums (never mind that xanthan gum is as “natural” as a cabbage). But I am neither a fashionable woman nor a modern one. I long for a return to the Good Old Days, when we embraced laboratory-grade goos not as monsters but as the scientific marvels they are.

I am speaking, of course, about Flubber (1997).

Flubber is an unromantic comedy about a chemistry professor, Philip Brainard (Robin Williams), who approaches his inventions the way I approach mine: with a wanton disregard for others’ health and safety.

His most exciting invention, Flubber, is a poison-green, non-Newtonian fluid that can shape-shift into an array of appealing and alarming forms. Much of the film plays like an extended infomercial for a product you cannot buy. In one of the film’s key epiphanies, Brainard discovers that he can aerosolize Flubber into millions of droplets that make everything from bowling balls to people supernaturally bouncy. Could this be medically useful? Shut up, nerd! If you spray it on the bottoms of children’s sneakers, they get really good at ball.

Flubber is going to the basketball game.

Aerosolized or not, Flubber always glurps its way back to a cohesive form. Left to its own devices, the substance defaults to a mambo-ing, pot-bellied homunculus, proving that all lifeforms long to be thicc.

The Flubber’s ability to mambo at will raises ethical questions. Is it sentient? We must assume so. And yet, we must also assume that it is not fully sentient, or it would surely balk at being sprayed on the bottoms of peoples’ shoes.

I leave this to the philosophers. My chief scientific interest is that Flubber exhibits the precise shear-thinning properties of a fluid thickened with xanthan gum.

Introducing: Flucker

Let’s suspend pretense: there was only one poison-green liquid I was ever going to choose for homemade Flubber.

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Longtime readers know I am a fan of appletinis in general and Sour Apple Pucker in particular. I admire the liqueur’s steadfast refusal to taste like any fruit. Instead, Apple Pucker tastes like an electric guitar played badly, under many feet of water.

I measured out a cup of Pucker and eyed the xanthan gum, feeling an increasing sense of unease. If you haven’t used xanthan gum before, the first thing to know is this: It’s incredibly powerful. It’s typically used in only homeopathic quantities. If you don’t have a jeweler’s scale, the best way to measure it is to borrow a coke spoon from a line cook.

The second thing to know about xanthan gum is that it demands violence. It is almost impossible to fully incorporate in a liquid with just a whisk and a prayer. Like me, it is most powerful when agitated. To harness its thickening power, you really need to blend.

With the amounts I was considering, I didn’t even try to use my immersion blender. I poured the Pucker directly into my Vitamix and started shearing in the xanthan a couple coke spoons at a time.

I know what you’re thinking: “A Vitamix! Well, lah-dee-dah. I wasn’t aware we were in the presence of a countess.” And to that I say: what do you think your subscription dollars are for? Health insurance? No. Every dollar earned from this newsletter is spent voiding manufacturer warranties.

I kept adding xanthan until the mixture started to resemble Flubber. I topped out at about a third of a cup. Truthfully, I wanted to keep going, but the Vitamix had started to emit a high-pitched wheeze, and the base felt uncomfortably hot.¹

I turned the substance out into a parfait glass before it could get any highfalutin’ ideas about its purpose. The Flucker was Flubber-like in elasticity and viscosity, but unsettlingly opaque. (I’ve heard you can clarify a xanthan gum solution with a chamber vacuum sealer, but I don’t have that many paid subscribers.) It also refused to mambo, even when I played Harry Belafonte.

I ate a few spoonfuls of the Flucker alone on my deck. It tasted like someone had blended Apple Pucker with a chapstick. It was not entirely unpleasant—only mostly. And I can think of some practical uses. Until now, it has been impossible to take an appletini on a drive. Just think of the sloshing! Flucker is a mess-free solution: Squeeze it from a tube and call it Nogurt.

There’s something I find aspirational about Flubber, a movie where “Man Creates Substance” is treated as a sufficient premise. I relate to Professor Brainard, a man who refuses to conceive of a higher purpose for his invention than helping high school boys dunk.

We should all feel a desire to use our talents for a greater good. But we don’t always have to use them for the greatest good.

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1. I washed out the Vitamix according to the manufacturers’ instructions: by rinsing it out, then running the machine with nothing but water and a little dish soap. When I poured the mixture out into the sink, the dish soap was thick.