This week I’ve decided to disengage the safety on #WhatsItWednesday. I stumped my Thanksgiving guests with this image. Perhaps m.b. folks can do better.

@cliffordbeshers Looks to me like the heating plate on a drip coffee machine where the heat has destroyed some of the blank surface. The bacon shaped things on top I can’t explain.

@odd No, but heat is involved.

@cliffordbeshers Is it a burn marks after a cigarette (+tobacco residue) on a respatex table?

@odd Residue after heat is part of it. Not tobacco, not a table. I don’t know what respatex is.

@Portufraise Yes, somewhere between deeply caramelized and burnt on a pan, but neither frying nor sauce pan.

@cliffordbeshers Respatex is brand name of a laminate (it became synonymous with those products) that was popular in kitchen- and diner tables in Norway especially in the 60s and 70s. I’m sure similar products were available in the US.

@cliffordbeshers Hum...a metal electric griddle surface?

@cliffordbeshers A kettle, or on marble? @portufraise

@odd Ah, I think I know that by experience, though I've never heard the name. Linoleum for tables.

@Portufraise Metal yes, but a type of pan. The heat source is separate. (And common!)

@odd @portufraise Metal, not kettle, not marble.

@cliffordbeshers Coffee pot!

@odd @Portufraise No coffee involved, but it is food related.

@cliffordbeshers One of those flat pancake/crepe pans?

@cliffordbeshers Or a wok?

@cliffordbeshers Pizza residue (cheese?) in a metal pizza oven?

@cliffordbeshers burnt fungus?

@vicky No, not burnt fungus.

@odd Not pizza, not cheese, but metal and oven are right.

@Portufraise Not a wok. Flat. Not for the stovetop.

@cliffordbeshers Pie juice dripped on a sheet pan that was put under a pie plate while baking.

@parag Juice, yes, sheet pan, yes, but not pie.

@JeanStylo Right process, wrong ingredient, and there is no paper involved.

@cliffordbeshers Caramelized and burned sugars from baking a sweet potato?

@fgtech Ah, so close, I'm going to call it good. It was a butternut squash, and the skin ripped as it was being removed. The fellow who cooked it couldn't figure out what the photo was.

There is one more element. I poured hot water in the pan to soak the sugars off. That's what accounts for the strange halo.