I’m on break this week, but I’m curious to hear what specific taste has that effect on you, conjuring memories from way back when, giving you a feeling of being in another place and time.
Photo by Simon McGill via Getty Images. Alas, I don’t have a photo of the chocolate croissants from A Baker’s Wife.
My Proust food moment
For me, it’s chocolate croissants from A Baker’s Wife’s Pastry Shop in Minneapolis. They’ve actually changed owners and recipes recently, to my great sadness, but before that, these pastries were giant, dense things with too much butter and an incredible amount of chocolate, a recipe like nothing else I’ve had. I loved those things. We served them as part of the dessert at our wedding; I had them at my high school and college graduation parties. When I traveled to Paris in 2008, I brought back a bunch of actual Parisian pastries, including pains au chocolat—I’d stopped at a good bakery on my way to the train to CDG that morning, and when I returned to Minneapolis, before even going home, I took the train to A Baker’s Wife, giant REI hiking pack still on my back, to share the treats with Gary, the baker.
Those chocolate croissants Gary made always took me back to Saturday breakfasts on the porch of my parents’ house. As a hungry teenager, I’d usually eat two, washed down with a glass of milk, while looking out at the shady yard and the sun poking in through the east-facing windows. The pastries meant comfort and leisure and a feeling of being at home, in a safe, happy place, in a specific moment of adolescence; eventually, they added the other layers of graduation parties and the late-night dessert spread at our wedding, everything laid out under the amber glow of fairy lights. We’d ordered half-sized chocolate croissants, but Gary made them essentially full-size and charged us half the price, an “I’ll take care of you” gesture that added to the sense that when I was eating one of those pastries, all was well with the world.
There are plenty of other foods that transport me to a singular moment or time in my life, but that’s the main one that comes to mind.
Now it’s your turn. What’s your Proust food memory?
Don’t feel like you have to write as much as I did—short is fine! Let’s get this conversation going.
I come in praise of my mother’s pie crust. Many have tried to duplicate it; all have failed. This was not a thick or flaky crust, never ever greasy. She somehow developed a delicate minimal tart style crust with enough heft to support any filling, be it juicy blueberries, leftover turkey and vegetables, chocolate cream. They all melted in your mouth, enhancing but never competing with the filling. During the holidays on weekends our house was like an opium den for pie eaters. People would come over and eat until they couldn’t move, then be sent away with some more, soon to return for another go. Machinations were made during the non-pie months to get her to make more - fresh peaches driven down from Georgia, buckets of u-pick berries, sometimes even live lobster.
She was bossy in the kitchen and made pies with lightning speed. We were welcome to help make the fillings, but then she’d say, “get out of the way,” and push out four pies at a time (the most our oven could fit) until she ran out of pie plates, or filling. She claimed she used the recipe off the Crisco can, and I saw her do it every year but I’ve never managed to keep the crust both cold and get it to roll out thin and hold together.
Fresh hot apple cider donuts with a cold drink of cider! I've gone apple picking nearly every year from the time I was 8, but I've had to miss a couple years recently due to not being in New England, and NOTHING tastes like that.
Back in my school days in northern Illinois, I'd eat Mrs. Fisher's Potato Chips (mrsfisherschips.com) almost daily. When I eat them as an adult anywhere in the U.S., I'm transported back to those carefree days every time.
A couple times a year during my childhood, my mother would get out a toddler-sized pot and cook sugo meat sauce from my old Italian grandmother's recipe. In went a whole head of garlic, handmade meatballs, crumbed Italian sausage, and an assortment of herbs and spices measured vaguely in pinches and dashes. It would simmer for 10 hours or more, and the smell (intoxicating) lingered for days. Today, I've been a vegan for nearly 7 years and the smell of my family's sugo is just a memory. Remaking it in meatless form is my personal white whale. Every so often, I'll come close to the old scent and I'll be transported back to my parents' kitchen, speckled with crushed tomatoes while rolling fresh meatballs in my palms.
There was a pizza place in NYC on 23rd St, somewhere around Lexington Ave. It was incredibly mediocre pizza by New York standards, but they offered an inexpensive lunch special so I’d go there occasionally. I got hooked once I placed the pizza -- it reminded me of the bowling alley pizza I knew from childhood. Great pizza? Hell no. But comforting and nostalgic? Definitely.
Funny - one of my favorite Proust memories would be a chocolate croissant made by a french bakery 2 doors down from my store. He was here to coach a woman's cycling team but he also needed a job and he succeeded - I loved everything he created number 1 - the chocolate croissant. number 2 ham and havarti on a croissant -- and then the killer brownies with gorgeous chocolate frosting. thanks for nudging a memory...
The first thing to come to mind for me is the biscuits my grandma and mom made when I was a child. I remember my grandma rolling out biscuits in her kitchen in North Carolina and my mom would always make what she called biscuit toast with any that weren't consumed on the first round for breakfast the next morning. I still adore good Southern biscuits made with buttermilk. Probably one of my favorite treats to this day, and I don't generally eat wheat or baked goods now. Biscuits bring out my heritage as a girl raised by a Southern mama.
I come in praise of my mother’s pie crust. Many have tried to duplicate it; all have failed. This was not a thick or flaky crust, never ever greasy. She somehow developed a delicate minimal tart style crust with enough heft to support any filling, be it juicy blueberries, leftover turkey and vegetables, chocolate cream. They all melted in your mouth, enhancing but never competing with the filling. During the holidays on weekends our house was like an opium den for pie eaters. People would come over and eat until they couldn’t move, then be sent away with some more, soon to return for another go. Machinations were made during the non-pie months to get her to make more - fresh peaches driven down from Georgia, buckets of u-pick berries, sometimes even live lobster.
She was bossy in the kitchen and made pies with lightning speed. We were welcome to help make the fillings, but then she’d say, “get out of the way,” and push out four pies at a time (the most our oven could fit) until she ran out of pie plates, or filling. She claimed she used the recipe off the Crisco can, and I saw her do it every year but I’ve never managed to keep the crust both cold and get it to roll out thin and hold together.
Fresh hot apple cider donuts with a cold drink of cider! I've gone apple picking nearly every year from the time I was 8, but I've had to miss a couple years recently due to not being in New England, and NOTHING tastes like that.
Back in my school days in northern Illinois, I'd eat Mrs. Fisher's Potato Chips (mrsfisherschips.com) almost daily. When I eat them as an adult anywhere in the U.S., I'm transported back to those carefree days every time.
A couple times a year during my childhood, my mother would get out a toddler-sized pot and cook sugo meat sauce from my old Italian grandmother's recipe. In went a whole head of garlic, handmade meatballs, crumbed Italian sausage, and an assortment of herbs and spices measured vaguely in pinches and dashes. It would simmer for 10 hours or more, and the smell (intoxicating) lingered for days. Today, I've been a vegan for nearly 7 years and the smell of my family's sugo is just a memory. Remaking it in meatless form is my personal white whale. Every so often, I'll come close to the old scent and I'll be transported back to my parents' kitchen, speckled with crushed tomatoes while rolling fresh meatballs in my palms.
There was a pizza place in NYC on 23rd St, somewhere around Lexington Ave. It was incredibly mediocre pizza by New York standards, but they offered an inexpensive lunch special so I’d go there occasionally. I got hooked once I placed the pizza -- it reminded me of the bowling alley pizza I knew from childhood. Great pizza? Hell no. But comforting and nostalgic? Definitely.
Funny - one of my favorite Proust memories would be a chocolate croissant made by a french bakery 2 doors down from my store. He was here to coach a woman's cycling team but he also needed a job and he succeeded - I loved everything he created number 1 - the chocolate croissant. number 2 ham and havarti on a croissant -- and then the killer brownies with gorgeous chocolate frosting. thanks for nudging a memory...
The first thing to come to mind for me is the biscuits my grandma and mom made when I was a child. I remember my grandma rolling out biscuits in her kitchen in North Carolina and my mom would always make what she called biscuit toast with any that weren't consumed on the first round for breakfast the next morning. I still adore good Southern biscuits made with buttermilk. Probably one of my favorite treats to this day, and I don't generally eat wheat or baked goods now. Biscuits bring out my heritage as a girl raised by a Southern mama.
Hope you are enjoying your break this week! Thank you for all the great posts.