French novelist Marcel Proust wrote, “When nothing else subsists from the past, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered … the smell and taste of things ermain poised a long time, like souls … bearing resiliently, on tiny and almost impalpable drops of their essence, the immense edifice of memory.”
As he struggled to recreate his childhood memories, Proust was served — almost accidentally — a madeleine. His aunt used to feed him the treat when he was a child, “dipping it first in her own cup of tea or tisane,” he wrote. The forgotten taste opened the door to the realm of the past, “and suddenly the memory revealed itself,” he added.
This excerpt from “In Search of Lost Time” is a poetic and moving example of the tight bond between taste and memory. It emphasizes the power of a memory embodied in the senses, especially in the sense of taste. Food is a tangible, ever-present element of our lives. It is a prerequisite for our physical existence. It is the basis of our first connection to another human.
Memory, on the other hand, is the most volatile element of our identity. It is unstable, susceptible to all forms of abuse and manipulation, disappearing into a void, then reemerging unexpectedly. These two central elements of our being are connected through the senses. When we see, smell, or taste, we remember.
Baron Edmond de Rothschild, a key figure in the French and global wine industry in the late-19th and early-20th centuries, provided another well-known example of this bond. When a reporter asked him about the best wine he’d ever tasted, the baron answered he could not remember its name, but he would never forget how it tasted: He drank it when he was 20 years old in the company of a very beautiful girl. The wish to recreate the flavor of memorable food or drinks is therefore a wish to return to the primary experience, to the lost time.
Naturally, these examples conjure reflections on the interplay between taste and commemoration, especially today. Taste can act as a vessel of remembrance, a mechanism of commemoration. It is an important definer of identity — we define ourselves through our preferences, including our culinary ones. Remembering the dead though their unique tastes may forge an authentic, intimate, and sensual connection to pivotal moments in their lives.
The rise of identity politics and the intensification of postmodern trends have paved the way for profound changes in how we remember. Personal and private commemoration are flourishing, while official or state-led practices are becoming less common. In this evolving landscape, we can identify unique and original forms of remembrance.
In a stroll through a cemetery, the curious visitor may notice a few unusual graves, which highlight an admired trait of the deceased. Some of these graves provide the recipe for Grandma Ida’s wonderful nut cookies, for example, or for Yankale’s legendary babka. Thus, the commemorators promise that the deceased are forever associated in their memories with the flavors they shared with them while alive.
Asif’s A Place at the Table project seeks to commemorate the victims of October 7 and the war by recreating their favorite dishes. Itay Berdichesky and his wife, Hadar, who were murdered on October 7 in their home in Kfar Aza, are remembered through the rakott káposzta (Hungarian casserole) and tomato soup they loved. When Itay’s mother prepares them, the flavors and aromas become carriers of memory in real time, a way to bring the memory of loved ones forward with us.
On the community level, many initiatives seek to preserve and honor the unique taste of communities, some of which have been lost or transformed. This includes the preservation of kibbutz recipes, for example, in the book “Communal Dining: Stories and Recipes From the Kibbutz,” while a project called Memory in the Kitchen uses recipes of Holocaust survivors to tell their stories. Meanwhile, the Taste of Memories initiative honors soldiers who died in battle by cooking their favorite dishes. According to its website, the endeavor organizes cooking events “during which participants gather to cook a favorite dish of a fallen soldier or terror victim — people who could not come back home to enjoy it themselves.”
As various television cooking shows demonstrate, cooking and baking have become firmly established in popular culture as tools of commemoration, or at least consolation. Cooking competitions, largely centered on self-exposure, have become performances of conjuring personal memories. In Israel, contestants are judged not only on the quality of their dishes, but also on the accompanying stories and their connection to memories of loss — a grandmother no longer with us or someone else we loved who has passed on. The circle of culinary memory — a convergence of taste, death, and entertainment — is closed, demonstrating the role of food in private, public, and commercial commemoration.
Proust wrote, “Because of those memories, so long abandoned and put out of mind, nothing now survived, everything was scattered.” But food can overcome that, helping us revive a lost memory.
We often talk about food’s power to console. And Proust tied this consolation to the great power of the memory of taste, or the taste of memory: “No sooner had the warm liquid mixed with the crumbs touched my palate than a shudder ran through me and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary thing that was happening to me. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, something isolated, detached, with no suggestion of its origin. And at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory — this new sensation having had on me the effect which love has of filling me with a precious essence; or rather this essence was not in me, it was me.”
Dr. Dan Arav’s research focuses on culture and memory. He is a senior lecturer and former dean of the School of Media Studies at the College of Management Academic Studies (COMAS), and a lecturer in the department of film and television at Tel Aviv University. Among his books are the “Encyclopedia of Ideas: Culture, Thought, Media,” written with Dr. David Gurevitch, and “Metim Lir’ot (Dying to See): War, Memory and Television in Israel 1967-1991.” He hosts a culture podcast on Kan Tarbut (The Israeli Public Broadcasting Corporation) and created the “Flâneur Project,” a virtual documentation of 20 days of physical and philosophical roaming through the 20 arrondissements of Paris.
