There are certain tastes and scents that immediately transport me to a very particular time and place. I love that about food. Taste memories can supply exquisite detail of a moment in time that conventional memory can’t capture.
For me, the smell and taste of my mother’s pot roast is such a memory. However, it took me years to remember the dish. When I did, my kids were small and I was feeling a bit ragged. The air outside was growing cooler and blustery and I was longing for a feeling of home that was eluding me in my own home after a day spent wrangling toddlers.
Then it hit me. I found myself craving a taste I remember as a child. I’m marching off the bus in the rain wearing my red slicker with silver snaps and walking to my home clutching a clear ladybug umbrella. Inside our home, the bright yellow kitchen is practically singing with the scents of fall embodied in my Mother’s Bavarian Pot Roast.
The aroma is a musky warmth, which permeates the house. It instantly brings back memories of little moments from childhood lost over time. The desire to share family traditions with my kids inspired the book, Cooking Up The Past: Celebrating Generations of Family Recipes, which captures my Mother’s recipes from her own childhood, then mine. These taste memories preserve family history as only a family meal is able.
Just like a mother of toddlers, all this dish needs is some time alone. I can easily assemble everything into a slow cooker on a busy morning. It requires only a quick stir of ingredients and spices all of which are poured over an inexpensive chuck roast. Low heat and time do the rest.
After 4 hours on the stovetop or all day in a slow cooker, the house smells like a home. By evening, dinner is ready with succulent beef luxuriating in a brew marked with tomatoes, cinnamon, ginger and tender vegetables.
The kids are older now, unbelievably on the verge of adolescence. They enter the house at the end of the day and are greeted by the heady scent of my childhood. I realize their memory of the minutiae of our everyday lives will soon be eclipsed by memories of more significant events like hopefully college, travel and probably (gulp) a first love.
But I hope the taste and scent will survive in the deeper recesses of their memory as they did for me. Perhaps just a brief craving for a taste of childhood will be enough to remember this otherwise ordinary day. Its only significance is our enjoyment of a good meal that we shared together.
Recipe adapted from Cooking Up The Past: Celebrating generations of family recipes
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