Is taste the most important part of food?

My grandmother has always made the best mac and cheese. She starts with the elbow-shaped macaronis and she adds milk and a bunch of shredded cheddar cheese. Then she puts it in a casserole dish and covers it in a layer of bread cubes and bakes the whole thing in the oven. She always uses the same casserole dish, a deep, square one with a glass lid. The resulting mac and cheese is a delicious combination of textures, with the dry, crunchy toast cube on the top and the gooey, stringy macaroni and cheese beneath. This mac and cheese has always been my favorite food, but not too long ago I realized it wasn't just because of the taste or the texture. 

Its like this, but with more pieces of toast and its in a square, ceramic casserole dish instead. 

When I started reading Religion in the Kitchen, I began thinking about what makes certain foods important, even when they probably wouldn't win any competitions. Don't tell any of my family members, but I do think that I have had mac and cheese that tasted better than my grandmother's. For some people there is a religious aspect to it. Maybe the food is part of ritual that brings people closer to their God or gods. I know for a fact that the wafers I was served in my Catholic high school were tasteless and dry. This mac and cheese wasn't part of that though, so what was it? After some thought, I realized that the mac and cheese brought with it a sense of family. It not just the taste, its the experience. Every time I'm eating it we are serving it from the same square dish in the center of the table and its always with my grandparents. I love my grandmother very much, and this mac and cheese reminds of that every time I eat it. To her I think her mac and cheese is the best mac and cheese in the world, and to me its true. Someone who doesn't ascribe the same meaning to it that I do may disagree, but to me it really is the best mac and cheese.