Comfort food
Comfort foods are familiar, simple foods that are home-cooked or eaten at informal restaurants. Peasant food, in other words, with some sentimental appeal.
Comfort foods have a lot of power to settle a trouble day, a bit like the orange Madeleine cake in Proust’s In Search of Lost Time or Remembrance of Things Past
Comfort food is made from common ingredients, down-to-earth, and easy to prepare. Many people eat comfort food because it is generally easily digestible, is in their memory tasty and flavorful, or carries a promise of reward, like mum used to offer.
Often you can’t buy this stuff in restaurants, except some hip places which charge a fortune for being so up market, snooty and trend setting.
Foodstuffs that can nearly always be certain to bring me a feeling of childish security include:
Meat loaf
Mushrooms on toast
Tripe and onions
Lamb sandwich with pickles
Ploughman’s lunch for picnics
Corned beef cooked in a pressure cooker
Fish and chips on a Friday night
Chile con carne, not from a can
Lumpy custard
Christmas pudding with coins in it
Home grown figs, plums and almonds
In later life, when I started a new family, we found security in new comfort foods:
Spaghetti bolognaise
Shepherd’s pie
Any Chinese food
Grilled cheese on toast
Bubble and squeak
Pancakes
Home made biscuits
Birthday cakes
I wonder what my grandkids generation will consider to be comfort food, when they have had a hard day at the nuclear plant. They have had so many meals in McDonalds, so many pizzas, so many restaurant brunches.
Of course they eat well at home, but their houses are full of coffee table cook books from Jamie and Nigella. Their parents are so busy there isn’t time for them to spend a day cooking slowly and filling their houses with wonderful aromas.
One house which I believe would have wonderful memories of magical comfort foods is described in the One Ordinary Day blog, written by Michele. Wonderful food, good photography