A Forage into Comfort Food and Cuisine
Illustration made for Ensemble Magazine by Ellie Gomez Price
Poised at the helm of tackling the behemoth that is comfort food, I asked myself: what does it mean to me? Since about ten, the answer was simple: pasta lathered in a rich sauce of crème fraîche, eggs, and feta – a meal my grandmother endearingly insists is at least three of my five-a-day (eggs, carbs, and cream, of course). Whilst my grandmother’s understanding of five-a-day is naïve; this delight of a meal isn’t.
Now, look, I get that the whole notion of comfort food is subjective, akin to that of a music taste or style. Indeed, I once cooked this for a friend only to have him suggest that we add mushrooms (?) paprika (??) and garlic (???). I was wholeheartedly unimpressed. In fact, so was he: Comfort food isn’t universal.
Digging through the sedimentation of human evolution, it comes as no surprise that we are drawn to the rich, starchy, and heavy, for relief.
Even our inclination to chocolates, ice cream, and pick’n’mix is underlined by the fact that, at a basic level, glucose is a fast-release carbohydrate, placating a lull in energy and boosting our happiness hormones (see: serotonin, dopamine, et al.). These foods are marketed to us as “indulgences” and “guilty pleasures,” but they do nothing but satisfy our most basic cravings for survival. Irony giggles at how the advertising gargoyles of the world have dismantled and repackaged our basal programming in a way that guilt-trips us for wanting to live.
Now, I am no stranger to the game. Consumerism is the fuel to our society’s fire, but – and this is a big but – comfort food in its true meaning is deeper than that. Comfort food is personal. Comfort food is cinnamon on toast; Branston pickle; mac and cheese; feta, eggs, and crème fraiche on fusilli. That tin that you keep in the back of the cupboard for times of strife. The last player on the bench: Comfort food is waiting when everyone else has left. This is ultimately what it underlines, it just happens to be that which is energy-dense, fueling us for our final hunter-gatherer pilgrimage.
So, my quest for food of comfort takes another turn. Papers and studies have all underlined the idea that we are drawn to the starchy and dense, but we are also pulled towards memories – of childhoods crammed around kitchen tables, midnight snacks, and sunny picnics.
Our personal bind to food is another ingredient in this recipe for definitive comfort. Simplicity in pleasure is also key: whilst a marathon cooking session is cathartic, there is gratification in swift satisfaction.
It should come as no surprise that the meals which have kept us going (I’m talking centuries), are the foundations of civilisation: potatoes, pasta, bread. We gravitate to that which is cheap and plentiful. Oftentimes, comfort food feels like an indulgence, but at its core, the food we turn to for comfort is that of survival.
Preferences vary geographically: potatoes are almost unanimously deemed comforting in the UK; aubergine in Afghanistan; plantain in Puerto Rico; rice and its variations in Japan. We seem to gravitate to that which we can rely on, whether it be that which is always in our cupboard or that which will keep during a drought or poor harvest.
I turn introspectively to my native Kosovan diet. Traditionally composed of starches, dairy, and cured meats, I love the cuisine I was raised with. Simple in its essence, yet always more complicated than initially thought, it is only as I seize the wheel of my own ship that I am made aware of the intricacies of the meals I ate daily as a child. However, my wider point is that the constitution of this diet is one borne of deprivation: these meals are fabricated to make the most of what is had.
Not only is the Kosovan diet underlined by necessity and scarcity, but the traditional means of eating is communal. Families often eat from one large dish and mealtimes are ceremonial. Food has only recently become Westernised, the introduction of cutlery nothing but mimicry of the media we consume. I choose to die on the hill that the optimal vessel of ingestion is bread: to scoop, to dip – the law of too many carbohydrates is illusive arbitrage.
Some of my fondest memories are comprised of scrambles for eggs and bartering for the best cut of meat and favourite pickle. We often cling to recollections of joy, and, for me, these are stapled by summers clambering over cousins, aunts, and uncles over tables, and illicit midnight snacks served with a side of pasta, in a slip of feta, cream, and eggs.
I concede that my experience is nothing but personal. To many, that which I describe is nothing short of repulsive. Nonetheless, it illustrates the pinnacle of my point: comfort food as not just a utility, to feed, but to nourish, both physically and emotionally. The ceremony of food combined with the making-do ethos of the Kosovan diet, embossed with the generational weight of what this means and has meant to those that came before me, is what creates comfort.
Perhaps the meals that withstand the sands of time coincide solemnly with those that serve pleasure: the kiss of comfort and convenience.
Drenusha Gashi is a fourth year student at the University of Edinburgh studying Maths. When not in the library, she can usually be found cooking, baking, or doing yoga.