Embodied Culinary Memory

Food as a physical experience

“Whenever we cook we become practical chemists, drawing on the accumulated knowledge of generations, and transforming what the Earth offers us into more concentrated forms of pleasure and nourishment” - Harold McGee

Over time, I’ve been thinking a lot about the physical experience of connecting with the world: How I feel in my body at a given moment or in response to a certain food/movement/situation, rather than just how I feel emotionally.

I’ve talked here before about mindfulness and pleasure and about mindful eating in general, which is one way I bridge the gap between my ever-active intellectual and emotional self and the physical experience of being in the world.

But how did that look for folks throughout history? How did we draw connections between the physical experience of food, and our experience of food writ large?

I also talk about the science of eating well, albeit briefly, since science and food is a whole area of inquiry that can and does fill books. If you want to dive a bit more down that rabbit hole, read this essay on humoral theory’s influence on modern western flavor pairings.

This week is the second in a series on culinary memory: On drawing parallels between cookbook history and our own experiences, using two historic books on food as our guides. Be sure to check out last week’s post for an introduction to the series and the subject matter!