During my college years, my snacks took the form of an almost mechanical ritual: two loaves of milk sliced lengthwise and a dose of Nutella, constituting a TV set saturated with industrial sugars. Since then, milk breads have for me the taste of that window of freedom between the return of classes and the arrival of the parents.
But the most famous literary example of the link between food and memories is of course that of Marcel Proust (Near Swannfirst volume ofIn search of lost time1913), when a fang in a madeleine suddenly brings him back to the same cakes, soaked in tea, that his aunt gave him. At the cinema, the animated film Ratatouille by Disney Pixar (2007) replays this taste flashback with the character of the food critic, whose features suddenly soften upon contact with ratatouille, the flagship dish of his childhood. Focus on these memories encapsulated in food and how they resurface.
Brain awakening of the senses
The boiling of a sauce in a saucepan, the crackling of onions on a hot pan, the crunch of a biscuit in your mouth, the aromas that fill the kitchen… From preparation to tasting, all the senses are mobilized at the cerebral level and can, in their own way, summon a more or less drawn memory.
“A dish acts as a sensory cue that ignites smell, taste, texture and emotion all at once. These signals converge towards the hippocampus, which reconstructs the scene from a fragment, and towards the amygdala, which fixes the valence (the affective tone of an emotional stimulus, editor’s note), which can be positive or negative.exposes the Dr Guillaume Fond, psychiatrist, doctor in cellular and molecular biology and author of the book Nourish your brain well – Against stress, anxiety, depression and cognitive declinepublished in January 2025.
“Childhood concentrates sensory novelties, comforting routines and key characters, three powerful levers of lasting encoding.”
From then on, the orbitofrontal cortex of the brain takes over and, with the dopamine system, examines the information in order to decide whether this reminder deserves our attention or not. “With each reactivation, the memory reconsolidates and rewrites itself slightly, gaining in precision or color depending on the mood of the moment”adds the doctor of biology.
Dishes, cakes, spices and aromatic herbs being particularly fragrant, smell plays a pivotal role in these memories connected to food. The nerve pathway of smell quickly reaches the emotional and memory areas of the brain, “without major thalamic detour”specifies the specialist, giving rise to more colorful memories than those recalled by taste.
A slice of childhood
In their study “A taste of nostalgia: Links between nostalgia and food consumption” published in 2007, Alexandra Vignolles and Paul-Emmanuel Pichon identify six types of nostalgia linked to the act of eating: childhood, regret (of a missing person, for example), substitution (of a product to which we no longer have access), homesickness, exceptional occasions and rediscovery. And it is especially towards childhood that the majority of memories evoked while eating converge.
“Childhood concentrates sensory novelties, comforting routines and key characters, three powerful levers of lasting encodingindicates Guillaume Fond. The sense of smell is very plastic and early associates aromas with places, times and people, leaving lasting imprints. During adolescence and early adulthood, a peak in autobiographical memories appears, but childhood dietary markers remain overrepresented. Later, routine and repetition stabilize these memories, which become shortcuts ready to be activated as soon as an aroma reappears. Meals also organized autobiographical memory through rituals, celebrations, family transmissions and the sharing of stories around the table.”
Podcast author and presenter Casseroles produced by Binge Audio, journalist Zazie Tavitian got behind the stove with her guests – and her microphone – to prepare alongside them a recipe that is dear to them. The opportunity to hear stories of family, traditions and uprooting, lulled by the sound of a whip or the crackling of food on the fire.
Throughout her interviews, the journalist noted a clear advantage of a certain type of sweet preparation in childhood memories. “Cakes are associated with festive moments and events: there is birthday cake, Sunday cake… We made two chocolate cakes and a baklava in Casseroles and all three were associated with very special moments”specifies Zazie Tavitian.
Disgust, nostalgia and marketing
If we immerse ourselves with pleasure in warm and comforting memories – like around a chocolate cake pierced with candles – food also invokes its share of negative experiences. These unpleasant resurgences were thus essential to human survival, since they allowed humans to identify the dangerous nature of certain foods and therefore to escape repeated poisoning.
“Many negative episodes exist after intoxication, discomfort, punishment at the table or family conflict associated with a dish.explains Guillaume Fond. These aversive traces resist well, because the amygdala and the insula reinforce avoidance to protect the body against a recurrence. As adults, we mainly look for positive cues, resulting in an exposure and recall bias that masks a negative part.”
From the school canteen, Zazie Tavitian has vivid memories of beef tongue: “It disgusted me so much that I cut it into small pieces, then I put it in a paper which I slipped into my pocket. I have never been able to eat beef tongue again without wanting to vomit.”
“Nostalgia can be linked to real personal memories, but brands will also reassure the consumer with the concept of authenticity.”
Aware of the evocative power of food, manufacturers do not hesitate to activate the lever of nostalgia to sell. Certain products, such as Bonne Maman jams or Herta sausages, have thus built their image on supposed authenticity, coupled with a nostalgia for another era.
“Nostalgia can be linked to real personal memories, but brands will also reassure the consumer with the concept of authenticitysays Alexandra Vignolles, teacher-researcher for the Institute of Advanced Economic and Commercial Studies (Inseec). We remember the Herta advertisement, in which we saw a little boy playing by the river and cooking his sausage over a wood fire. No one cooks their Herta sausage over a wood fire, but it’s a collective imagination that speaks to the French and evacuates the industrial reality of mass production.”
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Cooking to remember
And then, on an individual level, some consciously immerse themselves in the past through cooking. It is no longer a question, as Marcel Proust described it at length, of letting yourself be surprised by a mouthful containing memories, but of setting off in search of them yourself by taking the path of taste.
In an episode of the podcast Casserolesa guest named Mehdi reproduces his grandmother’s couscous recipe. Zazie Tavitian says: “He was really looking for taste, while others were more looking for symbolism in reproducing a recipe from a deceased person, also to partially make it their own.”
In a sound series related to Casserolestitled Looking for Jeanne (also available as a graphic novel, published in 2022), the podcast journalist sets out to discover one of her ancestors, Jeanne, murdered in 1943 by the Nazis. This quest is carried out through Jeanne’s recipe notebook, which Zazie Tavitian recently discovered. A way of summoning this family figure by making its farts-de-nun, its gnocchi and its semolina cake.
“When people die and we want to remember them, we can also cook their dishes”recalls the author. Between the festive memories of birthday cakes and those, more bitter, of a not-fresh oyster or of foods bearing the taste of punishment, there also nestles the image of the dead, whom their dishes retain the power to summon.
