Tasty Travels Through Time
The Flavors of Recollection
Forks and Nostalgia
Would you believe me if I told you that your refrigerator was a Time Machine? And that each shelf holds inside the very portals to your past, awaiting you to discover the moments that helped shape the individual you are today. Allow me to clarify before you get too excited…Or click out. One or the other. Now I don't mean that in a literal sense; your fridge isn’t actually a time machine. Obviously... You travel back in time almost everyday through the foods you eat, embarking on continuous explorations throughout all the layers of your subconscious mind. Each ingredient inside your fridge echoes the melodies of endless possibilities that invite you with a plethora of different flavors and dishes that can rekindle lost memories. Yeah, I know. Impressive, exceptional, 5 star, totally stellar facts here.
​
​Can you recall a time when you bit into a meal you hadn't eaten for years, and were instantly greeted with a memory that had been long kept stored away? Where were you? How old were you? How were you feeling? Many people like you get caught in this similar experience, with distinct flavors, smells and textures activating all kinds of recollections in the mind. If you couldn't tell by now, food is totally freaking fantabulous. Food is much more than just its nutrients, food is a unique story. And with one simple mouthful you can get transported back in time, and relive the scenes from the life that had slipped from your fingers. Tracing back your history through food will help you better understand the various events and experiences that made you well... you.​
Food forges channels that allow strong, evocative emotions and feelings to pass through us, setting free locked memories from your past. This idea is best expressed by none other than Marcel Proust, a classic novelist and literary critic. He aimed to explain how taste and flavors can involuntarily bring back your childhood through his extensive narrative “In Search For Lost Time.” The beginning of the novel guides readers through Proust’s experience eating a Madeleine cookie, the inexplicable feelings induced by the tea soaked snack inviting not just his tongue, but his mind and soul as well. “An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, but individual, detached, with no suggestion of its origin." As we see here, he clings to the rush of emotions that courses through him after taking the first bite and begins his search through his subconscious to find the source of those intense feelings.
His internal struggle to uncover the truth about his past illustrates the idea that food and our memories are strongly linked. This is enforced through the lines, "But when long-distant nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, still alone, more fragile, but with more vitality, more unsubstantial, more persistent, more faithful, the smell and taste of things remain poised a long time, like souls, repay to remind us, waiting and hoping for their moment, amid the ruins of all the rest; and bear unfaltering, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection."(In Search for Lost Time, Proust) Proust suggests that unbound to the forces of time, our memories always remain buried in the recesses of our mind, waiting for the moment to reveal itself through the "vast structure of recollection". Near the end, he discusses how the flavors trigger images of his childhood in Combray, coalescing into streams of memory showcasing the sunday morning he visited his aunt's bedroom and was offered a Madeleine cookie dipped in a cup of lime-flower tea.
Check out this scene! (31.00-40:00)​
In this movie clip from "Toast"we are guided through a scene depicting a young boy remembering his mother when he eats toast, illustrating how taste can bring back memories.
These are buñuelos. They taste as good as they look
​
Proust's description of the madeleine helped frame my understanding of the close interplay between food and memory, demonstrating how deeply flavors can resonate within us. Just as Proust’s childhood came firing back by the simple act of eating a madeleine cookie, my childhood returned through tasting my abuela's buñuelos, a traditional Mexican delicacy. It began one winter afternoon, I vividly recall returning home from yet another long, monotonous day at school. As I stepped past the entryway, I was instantly struck by a familiar aroma, with notes of sugar and cinnamon swirling through the air. The mental wear and boredom I felt was swiftly replaced by a distinct yet undefinable nostalgic sensation. I followed the source of the smell into the kitchen, and was greeted by my abuelita who was visiting all the way from Mexico. There on the table laid the large stacks of buñuelos she had fried earlier, each tower standing next to one another. The fried dough glinted with a golden light, with its heavy coat of sugar and cinnamon shimmering above. It's been long overdue since I've had these beauties.​​
​
​I grabbed one and wasted no time biting into the sweet and aromatic goodness. Before I knew it, I was 6 years old again, spending Nochebuena (Christmas Eve) at my abuelita's. The holiday music thrummed through me, my senses attuned to the snowflakes swirling against the window pane. I gazed off into the distance, thinking about whatever 6 year olds think about as I watched the icy crystals fall from the sky. My abuelita sat by my side and offered to share a plate of the buñuelos the rest of my family helped make together. With all that sugar flaunting itself at me, I obviously agreed. We admired the scenery together, stuffing our faces with buñuelos as we talked for hours. She gifted me her wisdom as I gave in return my own childish insights. The memory soon faded out of view and I was 17 again, my heart feeling light. Puchica! Those Buñuelos were so fire, they sprung me all the way back to the past! Just that one little bite brought back to life such a warm and tender memory, a memory so dear to me I could not believe I had forgotten it in the first place. That experience made me realize how magical food really is. How deeply it is intertwined with our emotions, feelings and memories. Proust was definitely onto something.