The Scent of Nostalgia

In this episode of Taste of Place, Anna chats with:

• Tanaïs, an author and perfumist based in Brooklyn, New York.

• Dr. Kimberley Wilson, a psychologist whose work sits at the intersection of food and psychology.

Here are some highlights:

The Versatility of Pepper

• Tanaïs discusses the wide range of dishes and cuisines in which pepper is a personal staple including Italian Cacio e Pepe, Bangladeshi food, and Indian food.

The Creation of Place Through Scent

• Tanaïs talks through their process of creating a fragrance that evokes a certain place by using materials and scents from that place.

• Tanaïs explains trying to move past the binary of scents that are either “feminine” or “masculine.” 

• Tanaïs highlights that scent can be a record of one’s traumatic experience as much as it can be of their more positive nostalgic memories.

Lover’s Rock

• Tanaïs describes the inspiration behind and the scent of “Lover’s Rock,” their perfume that uses pepper and is about remembering someone.

• Tanaïs describes the different notes of a fragrance including top notes, heart notes, and base notes. They categorize black pepper as typically being a top note.

Aching for Home

• Kimberley describes nostalgia as a sense of aching for home and explains how smell and taste can take us there.

• Kimberley explains that when eating a food that triggers nostalgia, it is often recalling an entire experience of an amalgamation of feelings rather than singular feelings like happiness, relief, or comfort.

Food as Identity

• Kimberley discusses how closely food is tied into identity and how our rituals and tastes for food are greatly influenced by our childhood and past experiences.

Rewriting our Stories

• Anna and Kimberley discuss using food to rebuild parts of our identity. Kimberley explains that through repetition, one can learn to like a specific food since psychologically, the more you’re exposed to something, the more likely you are to like it.