Sometimes when adults play with their food, it’s magical. In a new ad, a dollop of chutney is the cherry on the top of what looks to be a six-foot-tall sculpture made of cheese. The ad comes courtesy of Branston, a British pickle company that now manufactures all sorts of condiments, including chutneys. The ad pushes Branston’s newest chutney flavors, Mediterranean Tomato, Caramelized Onion, and Orchard Fruit.

Chutney isn’t such a huge deal in the U.S. We like our pickles, we like our relishes, our onion jams, our marmalades, and our applesauces. But in other countries like Britain and India, the birthplace of chutney, it’s a pretty big deal. In fact, BBC Good Food wrote about the “rise and rise” of chutneys and jams. Think of chutney as a combination of your favorite toppers—a condiment, surely, but one that can be appreciated in its own right, almost like a side dish. Chutneys can include fruit, vegetables, and spices. They can also be spicy or sweet. I’m not sure if everyone would agree, but Slate’s L.V. Anderson says that “there’s very little to be said about making chutney; you basically just throw a bunch of ingredients in a pot and cook them until they’ve turned to mush.” Chutneys have a myriad of uses, from dipping sauces to spreads to right-outta-the-jar snacks.

Adweek reminds us that the cheese tower in Branston’s new ad is reminiscent of Richard Dreyfus’s mashed potato sculpture in Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind. And just when you thought that sculpting cheese is something they only do in made-up commercials, you realize that it’s a real, legitimate thing. Like when this woman sculpted a 300-pound block of cheddar cheese into a cheese crown. Or the fact that this page is dedicated to the most “amazing cheese sculptures.”

The epic cheese tower in the Branston commercial is pretty impressive, and not nearly as disturbing as this sculpture of Steve Jobs. Guess that gives new meaning to the term “head cheese.”

Featured Photo Credit: Branston via Youtube.com

Michelina DelGizzi

Michelina DelGizzi, MS, MPH, is a writer and caseophile based in Boston and Lafayette, La.