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Dalton News
Nostalgia in the Kitchen: HS English Class Makes Madeleines
As part of an ongoing exploration of the relationship between food and identity -- individual, cultural, familial -- students in "Reading the Feast" took a trip to Dalton's teaching kitchen on February 22 to engage in experiential learning inspired by a famous excerpt from Proust's In Search of Lost Time.
In consideration of Proust's writing on memory and sensation, students made madeleines -- the catalyst for the author's own reflections -- while discussing why food, in particular, should be the locus of such nostalgic reflection. The question that students sought to answer between taking bites of madeleine: what is it about food which makes for such strong emotional resonances in our lives?
Students engaged with Proust's theme of involuntary memory as they sought to better understand the ways in which food can sometimes be elevated from the realm of the purely gustatory to that of personal mythology.
While making and baking the madeleines, the students reminisced about meals that inspire their vivid feelings of nostalgia. The students found commonalities in their most nostalgic childhood food memories, including, most notably, the simplicity of the meals.
From post-family trips to McDonald's and a shared Mister Softee snow cone with a sibling to the refreshing carbonation of a can of Sprite, the students attributed the feeling, familiarity, and company to providing that nostalgia rather than the food itself.
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