Food Memory Game

[ed davis]

The first part of this post will simply describe the game and its rules. For those who are interested, the rest of the post will explain how I developed the game and my response to it.

The game is to remember your first, earliest unique food taste memory. But

1. This has to be a single experience memory, not some taste that you had over and over in your childhood.

2. This has to be a memory about taste, not about experiences. You may still remember spilling a plate of sweet and sour chicken all over your nicest dress when you were 8 years old, but that is not relevant - unless you remember the specific taste of that plate of chicken.

Memory is a strange and elusive thing, particularly when you get to be over 40. Although I have been accused by some friends of remembering every meal I have ever eaten, of course I have forgotten myriad meals. A few years ago, I began thinking about all the wonderful things I ate as a child – from the first cherries of the early summer that I would climb the tree to snag and devour to all those favorite meals of my childhood (roast duck at the Chinese restaurant, my grandmother’s hand cut spaetzle with lentils, breaded veal slices in my mother’s wonderful mushroom and wine sauce, etc.) I can even remember virtually the entire menu of the best restaurant in the small town in which I grew up: veal sweetbreads, veal scallopini, double cut lamb chops, breast of capon, New York steak, prime rib (only Friday and Saturday evenings), and lobster both Thermidor and Newburg.

But remembering meals that I had eaten over and over was easy. I then began to try to focus on what was the earliest specific, unique food taste memory that I have. In other words, what is the earliest single taste experience in my life that I can remember? That was much harder than remembering tastes that I had experienced over and over. At first I thought about a duck breast in cherry sauce that I had at a lunch prepared at a cooking school in Columbus, Ohio around 1977. But I was already an adult by then. I also remembered a tournedos of beef in a dark sauce that I ate at a special meal in Eugene, OR around 1969 or 70. Better, but still not a childhood memory.

After thinking about this for a while (months, if not years), I finally have discovered what I think are the earliest specific taste memories – the only unique taste memories from my childhood. Probably the earliest (perhaps) was the time when I was about 8 (or younger?) and was with my parents at an Italian restaurant. We were sharing antipasti. Along with the salami, the cheeses, the pickled veggies, breadsticks etc, there were these dark green shriveled looking pods about 1-2” long that my mom and dad were sticking whole into their mouths. “What are those?” “Oh, try one, Eddie,” so at that moment I picked up an Italian peppercini by its stem, stuck it into my mouth and started chewing. For an instant my nose and mouth detected the sour flavor, but then suddenly all I could sense was hot green FIRE. I had never eaten anything remotely that spicy in my life. I’m not sure exactly what happened after that: maybe tears streamed out of my eyes, maybe I screeched or coughed, maybe I even spit the damn thing out. I do remember that my parents thought it was very funny and laughed like hell. It is amazing that I ever ate anything weird or spicy again.

My other early childhood unique taste memory took place when I was around 10 (1957 or 58) and was with my parents on a family vacation to the Oregon coast. My parents had heard about this fancy resort restaurant and wanted to try it. All I remember was that the restaurant was up on an ocean-side cliff with huge glass windows that showed the Pacific ocean and the surf. And I also remember one thing from the meal that day. My parents ordered caviar – and made a big deal about it, which is probably why I remember it. I can still recall eating the tiny salty gray-black pearls prominently perched on the milky white sour cream spread on the tip of a wedge of what I thought at the time was some weird toast without a crust. It was not an overwhelming or truly amazing taste (which was sort of what I was expecting), but it was subtly fishy and unlike anything I had ever eaten before. And I wanted more of it. Maybe it is this experience that explains why I have continued to seek out weird food and try tastes I’ve never had before.

So, once again, what is your earliest single food taste memory?

[srhcb]

My maternal grandfather died when I was two and one-half, but I can recall him seated at his roll top desk in the basement of the clothing store, and cutting me a slice off his fresh pear.

SB (used to know how to say "pear" in Serbian)(at least so I'm told)

[BarbaraY]

My first taste of ripe avocado. Eating it with a spoon out of the shell with the seed pocket filled with red wine vinegar and a sprinkle of salt. Still my favorite way to eat avocado.

[sparrowgrass]

Oh, man. Serbian pears and caviar. My first food memory is of a Peep, a little yellow sugar crusted marshmallow.

I distinctly remember that sugar crunch and mooshy marshmallow, and I thought it was the greatest thing I had ever tasted.

I must have been about three.

[mizducky]

Hi, Ed!

I've got food memories going back to before I was two years old, but as for a unique food-taste memory according to the game rules, that would be from a family vacation somewhere on the Mid-Atlantic coast (probably Chesapeake Bay) when I was perhaps six or seven. We went to what I, as a kid, thought of as a very fancy dress-up seafood restaurant (it probably wasn't all that fancy in reality, but that's how my kid-self remembered it). I ordered some kind of fish--I have contradictory memories as to whether the menu called it "rockfish" or "bluefish," but whatever it was, it just blew my mind: mild but well-flavored, and the flesh literally did melt in my mouth. I spent the entire meal eating this stuff in a trance, mesmerized by the mouthfeel of it. I had never before had fish like that, and I'm hard-pressed to remember having anything like it since.

[BeeZee]

Well, aside from the sugary "King Vitamin" cereal (like Capt Crunch) that I know I ate as a kindergardener...

When I was around 6, we moved from an apt. to a house on Long Island. Our next door neighbors were avid gardeners and bee-keepers.

I have a vivid memory of the taste of raspberries off the bush in their yard...pulling baby carrots and radishes out of the ground, washing off the dirt and eating them (so sweet!). Fresh honey from the comb. As a kid raised (thus far) on canned or frozen veg., I have those vivid tastes in my memory.

[purplewiz]

The honeysuckle in my grandmother's backyard. I don't remember how old I was, but I remember one of my older cousins showed me that if you plucked off a bloom and pulled the center thingie out the bottom slowly, you'd get one drop of the most amazingly sweet nectar. Through experimentation, we discovered the darker yellow older flowers had the tastiest nectar, but if they got too dark, they wouldn't have any left.

There may be an earliermemorly , but I remember the tastes of that afternoon vividly.

Marcia.

[Young2Cook]

Interesting game rules, and interesting also how many of the earliest memories, the ones around age two, seem to involve mouth feel. Mine does too. I was about two, sitting in our next door neighbor's kitchen, eating soft boiled eggs in a bowl with pieces of equally tender soft bread to dip in the egg mixture. The color and textures of that memory are still vivid. It's also likely my earliest memory, taste or otherwise.

/Deborah

[maggiethecat]

Orange Crush. For me it was Orange Crush...

A walk down Daily Gullet memory lane

[patti]

Both of my memories involve me being fooled by what I thought I was eating.

The first memory took place in my grandmother's kitchen. I was sitting in a high chair, so I must've been fairly young, or at least young enough and small enough to still fit in a high chair. She served me what I thought was spinach (which I loved), but turned out to be mustard greens. Blech! Bitter! Bitter! Bad spinach! Bad Grandma!

The second memory was somewhere around the age of 3 or 4. I was at a neighbor's house, and the dad gave me what I thought was a slice of white bread. It was dense, yet light, sweet, and yummy. I told him it was the best bread I ever ate. Um, it was angel food cake.

[lapasterie]

As a lifelong chocoholic.....Koppers Mocha Beans that my Grandfather use to buy

[tejon]

It's so hard to sort out the memories of foods that I must have eaten since I was tiny with something that actually stands alone. I remember vivdly the taste and feel of an artichoke leaf dipped in butter, the feel of the warm sun as we ate them, and the odd spiky look of the plant it had been cut from. I remember biting into a warm, ripe peach that had been plucked off my Grandfather's tree, also surrounded by sun and warmth. And strawberries that my sister and I delighted in picking, trying to spy a glimpse of red amongst the deep green leaves. And my Grandmother's rolls that were so smooth and curved and buttery. But all of these happened many times as I grew up and all blur together.

The earliest single food memory I can find happened when I was nine years old. My mom was in a management position and had to take a trip to Europe and somehow managed to take my younger sister and I along with her. We were in Italy, in a restaurant with one of the local managers. Before the meal, the waiter placed a plate with a slice of melon wrapped in prosciutto. I had never seen anything like this before and thought the colors were beautiful. Then I took a bite and marveled at how the salty, rich pork seemed perfect against the sweet, juicy melon. This was after the shock of having the waiter bring both me and my sister, who was six, glasses of wine. I'll never forget that dinner!