The 'Sound' of Cooking
Have you experienced the transformational power of smell recently? I mean a nice smell rather than teenagers bedrooms or the fakey bubble gum industrial air freshener that wafts from public toilets. I mean a perfume or an aftershave that reminds you of a time in your life that is steeped deep within. For me, a spray of LYNX Africa in the air takes me back to school discos when it clung with sweat and youthful anticipation to the walls and ceilings. A waft of perfume I used to wear growing up takes me right back - no words, no prompts other than the memory tape that unfurls in my head as the scent suddenly arrives, lingers and then wafts away again and with it, the fleeting memory dissolves, travels upwards to the stars, until I smell it again.
Anything Calvin Klein was my go to scent in the 90’s (like most people). Unlike today there was a distinct unsaturation of fragrance. CK was quick to realise the lucrativeness of it early on before Z-listers started at it in the noughties. Eternity was a particular fave - I LOVED the adverts for it, I thought if I doused myself in enough of it I might look a bit like or at least channel Christy Turlington…but guess what? It didn’t happen. Obsession, Escape and then in 1994 a new concept; a groundbreaking, refreshing unisex fragrance, CK One.
But maybe your prompt is not by a perfume, instead it’s the scent of a country when you step off the plane - the smell of a country enveloping you in its all, not just its geography. A bustling city, of spices and unusual markets, the beach, sand and salty sea air. The smell of diesel that reminds you of boat trips, of turf or wood that grows and burns in a different country; of pine trees, snow, warm wine and chocolate.
Perhaps it’s the smell of cooking that takes you back or that cloaks you in comfort when you need it. The smell of mum’s roast dinner, home made chicken soup when you’re not well or spices wafting up the stairs. There’s something deeply nourishing about the smell of food being prepped. It might remind us of being small and because someone else was thinking about it, planning it and cooking it, it really did taste better. Of course, the savouring of the smell of food cooking is particularly wondrous; you’re teasing the senses in the first part, in the second that anticipation is fully and rightly satisfied in the consumption.
Which begs the question, do we taste with our nose or our tongue/mouth? Trying to enjoy a meal or in fact anything when stuffed with a head cold is indicative that smell is integral to the nuance of taste and overall enjoyment of food. In fact, because the nose and mouth are connected through the same airway, our sense of smell is responsible for about 80% of what we taste - we essentially taste and smell at the same time. Moreover the olfactory bulb (where we process smell) is directly connected to the amygdala (where we process emotion) and the hippocampus (memory).
I mean if you’re struggling to taste, you could try chewing with your mouth open? Research in 2022 by Oxford University found that ‘chewing with an open mouth helps more aromatic compounds reach the back of the nose – which kick-starts the olfactory sensory neurons and heightens our experience of eating.’ At your own risk and not when on a first date or when the Sunday best tablecloth is out. Maybe this one is best for solo practice, after all only you can decide whether it tastes better open mouthed.….Or maybe it’s a USP for a new restaurant - there’s the place where they serve in the pitch black and the other restaurant where the waiting staff are paid to be as rude as possible to paying customers. So you know, it could be the messy start of something.
But all of this talk of food and smells but what about the sound of cooking . I often think about this. I love the sound of the kitchen busy-ness (it’s usually me making it) but when you’re not the orchestrator, it’s such a warming sound to listen to outside of the room especially if you are being cooked for. The necessary if tedious preparation work of peeling, chopping, scraping and then eventually the aromas that begin to rise and float. Maybe walking along past houses after work you become aware of the pockets of cooking and try to guess what they’re having for dinner behind closed doors. Or the waft of BBQ’s in the lighter months when that smell is evocative enough to confirm that summer has finally arrived.
Hearing the sounds in the kitchen started at a young age for me. Occasionally my mum would have to leave me and my sister alone. I’d pretend I was fine when she popped out down the road, but really I was quite scared. So I used to go into the kitchen and fill the kettle and put it on. Because she drank so much tea, the sound of the steady incline of the kettle boiling meant she was there and I shouldn’t worry. Its low hum and final crescendo was a comforting noise and it distracted me from thinking about anything bad happening. It grounded me to the fact that she would be back any minute and everything was ok again because she was home.
The epiphany of hearing the sounds of cooking started a little later, circa 1990 when I was quite small on the beautiful White Isle of Ibiza. Our parents used to take us there each year, and we all LOVED it. We’d travel around to a different beach every day all four of us wedged into the back of a tiny small (usually white) extremely sweaty hire car (era was very pre air con). And it was there on my absolute favourite beach of all time that we would often be treated to lunch in my favourite beach bar, The Jockey Club. It was brimming with very beautiful and very tanned people (we were not). The vibe was pure Ibiza cool and the food was fantastic. Before we would sit down for lunch, from the beach I could hear the busy preparation - the chopping noise on the boards, the clang of pots and pans, the sizzle of oil and the ensuing onions, the high and low chatter in the kitchen, the intermittent thump of the cool bass, the wafts of prawns and paella and charring meat - cuisine smoke carrying its sumptuous anticipation across the beach, spurring taste buds. The pop of the corks, the clanks of beer bottles, the chinks of the rose wine glasses, the rattle of cutlery and the clunking of the ceramic plates being laid out, ready for the delicious food to be set upon. For me, so much of that was the expectant prelude to the hot summer beach lunch that ensued.
Such happy days with the family together in our favourite place; sand in all the wrong places, salty itchy skin, sticky lemony hair, a warm mediterranean breeze lilting through the open wooden clad bar, happy freckles and full bellies. Ah nostalgic Ibiza days - the memory tape is long, happy and sun soaked. Of course I cannot remember precisely what we ate at all - like so often the detail in memory is lost and it is the emotional imprint the entire experience of sound and smell yielded. All of that and more that can swoop down unannounced by the certain tone of a plate being unstacked or the certain tone of the chink of a glass. Almost 35 years later. That’s a powerful memory rooted primarily in sound.
The warm glow of memory is such a personal thing reiterating the truth in the phrase that we do not remember days, we remember the intricacy and intimacy of moments strung together - the details evolve and get forgotten over time but the emotion is called forth from what we sometimes consider to be our lesser senses such as sound and smell.
Go smell your perfume from years ago and see what floats up…