With Mother’s Day upon us, Salon magazine set out to show us why we (most of us, anyway) like our mother’s cooking. They interviewed a neurologist who explained, in evolutionary terms, why people are drawn to the familiar, and how tastes are set in one’s childhood, tastes that set the trajectory of one’s entire life. What I found most interesting though were the neurologist’s comments on smell and nostalgia.
I suppose that’s because I’m right now in my hometown where I’m experiencing a lot of that. I walk down the beach and the salt air takes me back to my childhood. I walk into an old independently-owned drugstore (and there aren’t a lot of them) and it smells just like it did when I was running back to the comic book turnstile as a six year-old. I visited my home church the other day and it smells just like it did in 1976, a combination of new carpet fiber and old lady perfume.
The neurologist explained the diversity in how Americans experience this. He pointed to studies that show that Americans everywhere tend to be made nostalgic by the smell of baked goods. But, beyond that, “people from the East coast describe the smell of flowers as making them nostalgic for childhood. In the South it was the smell of fresh air, and in the Midwest it was the smell of farm animals. On the West coast it was the smell of meat cooking or meat barbecuing.”
The neurologist said that studies also show that smell nostalgia has everything to do with when you were born, not just where.
“For people born from 1900 to 1930, natural smells made them nostalgic for their childhood—trees, horses, hay, pine, that sort of thing. People born from 1930 to 1980 were more likely to describe artificial smells that make them nostalgic for childhood—Playdoh, Pez, Sweet Tarts, Vapo rub, jet fuel.”
