Michael Harris is the author of several books. Solitude: A singular life in a crowded world and The end of absence: Recovering what has been lost in an always-on world.
Anton Ego, Pixar’s prickly food critic Ratatouille, the fork of the eponymous dish is lifted to the mouth and carried into the kitchen of his beloved mother.Proust’s narrator In search of lost time When he steeps Madeleine in lime flower tea, everything about his childhood comes to him “like a stage set.”in the movie liona lost boy, Saroo, takes a sip of syrupy jalebi and regains a precious memory of his first home.
We’ve all had those moments when a bite doesn’t just recall a superficial catalog of taste memories, but somehow restructures our entire lived experience. It’s as if certain moments of our lives are tied to a perfectly cooked rice or a still-warm chocolate chip cookie by an unbreakable string.
But in the age of cooking apps, such experiences, tied to a personal past, rarely happen. The food we prepare today seems to come from nowhere, with no family ties whatsoever. Although they are often more nutritious than the meals we grew up with, and may even be “more palatable,” breakfast, lunch, and dinner are meant to provide more energy than our bodies. Have we brought on spiritual malnutrition for ourselves?
As in most households, the question arises in our household: “What’s for dinner?” It has a stressed, almost existential tone. My husband and I don’t want the same thing as yesterday, too much meat (environment), too much dairy (digestion), too many onions, too few vegetables… Few of the dishes we grew up with are to our taste. Strict legislation.Desperately I turn around Use the New York Times Cooking app to get ideas. There, experts guide me through the flamboyant dishes my ancestors would have squinted at. You can also call the Yummly app. AI-powered personalization and ingredient search capabilities may be helpful. Or “Kitchen Stories,” where step-by-step video tutorials help nervous cooks. Or you might give up on choosing altogether and sign up for a pre-prepared meal kit. Its usage is increasing rapidly. But the result, delicious and sophisticated as it may be, still leaves me hungry for something more.
The movement toward non-family recipes, recipes created by celebrity chefs and food bloggers, has been going on for a long time. Of course, for most of human history, there were no cooking guides other than family and friends. We learned by watching others cook. But in the 19th century he did two things that changed everything. Increased literacy made cookbooks possible, and increased immigration made cookbooks necessary. An educated young man moved far from his hometown. This allowed recipes to begin to separate from family know-how. As measurement systems became standardized, recipes were further separated and transformed into scientific instructions.
Today, two factors are being exploited to their fullest: literacy and immigration. Our culture is text-heavy, online instruction has become second nature, and we are now very mobile; separated The circumstances of our parents and grandparents make preparing their food seem as difficult as stirring butter. This disconnect made room for several famous chefs of the 20th century (Julia Child, James Beard) and a group of today’s culinary luminaries. They provide an endless supply of new recipes, techniques, and gear. (Do you have an air fryer? A sous vide cooker? Do you stock up on pomegranate molasses? Have you heard that there are 5 new ways to make choux pastry?)
Once upon a time, recipes reminded us of ourselves. Today they tell us what we should be.
When her husband’s mother developed dementia, Kenny became more serious about the Korean food her husband used to cook for her. Korean mothers tend to put effort into preparing meals, making it almost impossible to completely replace their mothers’ meals. However, he taught himself the basics of kimchi. Suddenly, a huge vat of cabbage and a bag of gochugaru dominated the kitchen. The empty pickle jar was recognized as a “great kimchi jar” and added to his collection.he called his friends home Kimjang We held a kimchi making party and shared our newly discovered knowledge. Of course, her mother always made her own food, so it was never possible to replace her mother’s kimchi. sonmat Not an exact measurement (hand taste). Kenny could rely only on sensory memory, not written recipes. (By the way, Western recipes had a similar ambiguity until recently. Some cooks would measure the oven temperature by seeing how long they could keep their hands in the oven.) )
When my grandmother passed away, I watched Kenny tear apart a Chinese cabbage with a notch in it (it’s perfect) Assa Sassa sound) and wished there had been a stronger connection to the food she was making. I had never stood beside her in the kitchen and she had never learned the basic lessons she could pass on. Her food has been there all my life, some of my most literal sustenance, and yet I know that the meaning and memory baked into everything she made will always be there. I thought it was obvious.
My memories settle on the sweet, chewy breads (both Kaiser and brioche) that my grandmother was famous for. I remember them being piled up in wicker baskets or stuffed into Ziploc bags at family parties and handed out with false goodwill.
How real is this pain of nostalgia? How fixed are our food memories? Dozens of taste receptor cells line each taste bud on your tongue, and these cells send messages to your brain when you take a bite of dinner. Meanwhile, 12 million olfactory receptors send collateral data to the olfactory bulb, all of which goes to areas of the brain associated with memory and emotion. The memories that food creates are necessarily strong. Animals often learn the hard way about poisonous foods, but our enduring aversion to brightly colored insects and spiky pufferfish is what keeps us alive. But primitive memories can also be positive. From an early age, we learn what is safe and what is good for us. And those memories prompt us not only to seek out the calories and vitamins we need, but also to crave foods that remind us of family, friends, and home.
So what do we lose when we forget the meals our parents and grandparents cooked for us? It’s not just a missed opportunity to reminisce. Without mom’s kimchi and grandma’s bread baking, some of the fundamental memories that form who we are will remain dormant.
As I scrolled through my cooking app again and thought about what to make for dinner, I found myself lamenting all the dishes I had made that had nothing to do with my family’s history or my husband’s. I realized that I was there. We all need a dose of familiar nutrition from time to time. This is culinary food that is like a mnemonic device that recreates Proust’s “stage sets” of the past.
My aunt recovered a handwritten copy of my grandmother’s bread recipe. Instructions in hand, she consulted a cousin who had made it before (“Put a hot water bottle under the bowl to help it rise,” she advised). Then, one afternoon, I immersed myself in many hours of experimentation. The pleasant, slightly alcoholic smell of yeast bubbling in a bowl of warm water caught me off guard. So does the smell of hot milk and melted butter and melted sugar. The ingredients of the dough moved from pot to bowl to counter in simple but alchemical steps. Then I sat by the oven door and looked at the unstable mass through the glass to see if what came out was correct.
some kind of.
I think this is a common thing to do when baking bread for the first time. I was missing some tricks and techniques. Something that can only be learned by being in a room with someone who knows and being able to communicate it correctly. Still, I was able to create a miniature Madeleine moment by pulling out the first tray and tearing apart the steaming samples. I knew that taste. I knew the pottery. I could smell not only the bread, but also the smell of my grandmother’s living room, the dust and sunlight of the house.
Kenny looked at dozens of golden-brown-challenged recipes and asked why this recipe made so many things. I looked over at the countertop and shrugged. “I don’t know,” I told him. “I think she baked bread for all of us.”
