conceptual integration

"Here is a simple example of a blend that recently appeared on TV: a Jewish pizza. A Jewish cooking show featured Wolfgang Puck, the noted Austrian chef from LA, famous for his elegant pizzas and married to a Jewish woman. His Jewish pizza starts with a pizza dough baked with finely sliced red onions then topped with crème fraiche (an elegant French variant of sour cream), finely chopped shallots, lox, salmon caviar, and finely chopped dill. The pizza dough is the element taken from the conventional pizza, and the Jewish elements are the lox, crème fraiche (sour cream a la Wolfgang Puck), onion, and so on. As an object in the world, the Jewish pizza is just what it is: lox, dough, onions, a cultured cream, etc. But conceptually (and tastewise), it is a blend of elements from pizzas and elements from Jewish cooking. As the Jewish pizza has become a staple of Puck's repertoire, it has become a food concept of its own. Although for the most part it leaves in place the concept of pizza and the concept of Jewish cooking, it makes a slight extension of both concepts and thereby extends the idea of Jewish cooking and the idea of what a pizza is." (#60 4256)