Remembrance of things past

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During my master’s degree, I spent two 3-week stints in residency on campus. It was great — intense days of learning extending into the night, and many new friendships forged over the frustrations and thrills of that same learning. I had a private room, a shared bathroom, and a very shared fridge and kettle in the super-minimal kitchen in the common room. While I loved lots about those weeks in residence, what I missed was the smell of good food cooking. We maybe had a microwave in that common room, I don’t remember, but we definitely didn’t have a proper oven in which to bake or roast anything from which would emanate a lovely mouth-watering aroma.

Sunday’s supper in this house was supposed to cook slowly, deliver that delicious aroma, and give us a tasty meal to enjoy at the end of the day. It achieved two out of three, with the missing element being, sadly, the tasty meal. I had tried my hand at using pasture-raised chicken to slow-cook in the old fashioned crockpot, but it wasn’t ready by eating time.

French essayist Marcel Proust wrote about how the smell of food can evoke powerful memories and I always think of him and his famous madeleines dipped in tea* when a delicious meal is cooking in the kitchen. Too bad that is all we had on Sunday — memories of meals past. And our usual stand-by meal of pasta with veg sauce. No aromas cooking, but guaranteed tasty. Every time.

* In a fascinating book that explores the intersection between art and brain science, Jonah Lehrer, in Proust Was A Neuroscientist, reports that “our senses of smell and taste are uniquely sentimental. This is because smell and taste are the only senses that connect directly to the hippocampus, the center of the brain’s long-term memory. Proust intuited this anatomy,” Lehrer continues. “He used the taste of the madeleine and the smell of the tea to channel his childhood. Just looking at the scalloped cookie brought back nothing.” It was the taste and smell of the little cake dipped into tea that was the “revelation.” [Source]




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Land acknowledgement: I respectfully recognize that I live on the original lands of Anishinaabe, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota and Dene peoples, and on the homeland of the Métis Nation.


Photo of madeleines by Adam Bartoszewicz on Unsplash 

Comments

  1. FintaDecember 7, 2021 at 6:10 AM

    My Julie has read all of Proust, and we have even driven to Illiers-Combray, toured chez Tante Leonie, and wandered in the garden. The next Christmas I bought Julie a madeleine pan, found what I thought was the best recipe, made up and refrigerated the dough, and on Christmas morning gave her the lot. Since then we've had madeleines for our Christmas breakfast most years. They aren't easy to get right, and I admire Tante Leonie. She did it in a corset and on a wood stove!

    Our Sunday supper this week did all the thing you were hoping from yours. Pork and kraut, slow cooked, but in the oven as we don't have a slow cooker. Unless I count. I'm pretty slow.

    Forgive my morning nonsense. xo

    ReplyDelete
  2. BarbaraDecember 7, 2021 at 9:26 AM

    Hot buttered toast and coffee brings back my mother.

    ReplyDelete

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