The Importance of Aromas in the Practice of Cooking

     

    As many individuals in my immediate circle can attest, I have always been quite the “foodie” throughout my 20 years of life. Never once in my existence have I been described as being a “picky eater” (or even a dainty eater, for that matter). While it may seem like a natural progression for someone who has always possessed a love of eating to (inevitably) acquire a great interest in cooking, many family members of mine were taken a bit off guard by my enthusiastic acceptance of the culinary arts. This unpreparedness on their part seems to stem from their preconceived perceptions of me as a possessor of a highly perfectionistic personality type. Cooking, at least in the terms it has most often been described as being to me, is well known as being a practice that doesn’t necessarily require chefs to follow recipes to a tee; there exists a lot of room to improvise on the ingredients (and their portion sizes) that can differ from an original recipe dependent on the personal preference of the cook (or of the crowd said chef may be preparing food for). One would think that a tense individual, who thrives in the presence of rigid rules/regulations in the pursuit of so-called “perfect” outcomes, wouldn’t enjoy the highly improvisational aspects/facets of cooking dishes of all kinds. And yet, this past statement couldn’t be further from the truth in my own experience(s).

As I’m sure most (or a least a large number of) chefs can say, I began my journey to aspiring cook-hood through family recipes that have been passed down from prior generations. Most of these recipes came from my mother’s side of the family, who had originated somewhere in the Middle East (don’t ask me where, I don’t have the specifics). Due to this fact, many of the dishes that have been passed down retain many flavor principles/preferences from that part of the world (such as being heavy handed with certain spices). The recipe I feel compelled to talk about today, which also happens to be one of my absolute favorites, would be my family's rendition of stuffed grape leaves. Due to the fact that I’m one of the few remaining members of my family to have seen the physical copy of the recipe, it’s only fair I give you a brief description of some of what comprises these small goodies. As you’ll see in the second picture provided above, the basic idea behind this dish is just to fold grape leaves in small rolls with a mixture of rice, lamb meat, all-spice, mint, garlic salt, garlic powder and tomato paste in the center. While this may sound simple at first glance, there is a slight caveat to the simplistic makeup of this food item. My ancestors, and those who inherited the recipe after them, chose to not specify how the spices should be measured out. Due to this fact, you can have a few members of my family, who still know how to make this dish, cook with the same recipe in front of them and there could be pretty dramatic (or even subtle) differences in the flavors of each product. With this having been said though, there is one exception to the broader statement made above in my prior sentence. That being, I can make this recipe the exact same way (with scarily similar flavors) as my deceased grandmother could accomplish. Now you may be inclined to ask how this is possible. I, too, wondered about this uncanny ability of mine until recently when I made stuffed grape leaves for dinner one night. As the title of this post suggests, I believe that my sense of smell has been the biggest contributing factor that has allowed me to preserve my Mema’s interpretation of this family dish.

As you may or may not have guessed, my grandmother was the person who first walked me through how to make this delicacy when I was a pre-teen; we made this dish together many times thereafter too. Of course, even before I could (or was even allowed to) work a stove, this dish was something I (apparently) ate pretty frequently when I would visit Mema for special occasions. All the favors and smells of this type of food have been permanently engrained into my memory. Due to my frequent exposure to this food item, through the act of eating and receiving instructions on how to make it, I find that I can tell when I’ve seasoned the raw lamb meat well enough just by the smell it gives off after having been mixed. As I’m sure most people would be, I’m way too much of a chicken to take a little taste of the spiced raw meat mixture before wrapping it up in grape leaves, as I worry far too much about potential food poisoning. Smelling the mixture, however, gives me the opportunity to gauge whether I’ve put too much or too little of certain potent smelling ingredients into the blend; I know from past experience the exact way it should smell before (and even while) this food is supposed to be cooked, so it becomes easier because of my memory to guesstimate the right spice ratios in an almost (always) consistent manner.

Within their work entitled The Aroma of Righteousness, Deborah Green brought up a point that stuck with me quite a bit. At different points within their book, Green makes a few references to God’s (textual) preference(s) for burnt sacrifices. To provide a bit of context, these sacrifices have been described to me as being a ritual (beginning with the priestly family of Aaron) of burning certain  (previously slaughtered) animals in a specified section of a Temple so that the aroma of their flesh can rise up to God (to enjoy) in the form of smoke. As stated by the previously mentioned author about God’s supposed preferences:

“In line with ancient tradition that considers sacrifices for the gods, another technical term, lehem, ‘food,’ also appears in connection with these sacrifices. For example, God commands, ‘You will make sure to bring to me at the appointed times my offering, my food, my offering by fire of soothing odor to me’ (Num 28:2). While it may appear from this example that the human’s job is to prepare ‘food,’ in the form of sacrifices, for the deity at regular intervals, the implications of ‘soothing odor,’ whether literal or metaphorical, extend the trajectory of meaning beyond food or physical substance. Within the metaphorical frame rests the idea of a human-divine relationship that observes regular ritual and therefore regular interaction and communication. On a literal level, the term implies that sacrifices performed by humans affect God’s mood or judgement and thereby effect a change in the rapport between humans and God” (Green 72).

With my own lived experiences of preparing and consuming food in mind, I can have an understanding

of how an odor can be “soothing.” When I’m the head-chef of my family’s home kitchen making stuffed grape leaves, nothing puts me at ease more than knowing that the odor made by both the raw and cooked/steamed product aligns with my past perceptions of how this dish is meant to smell; the more often I am tempted to take the lid off of my cooking pot to sneak a quick sniff of the stuffed grape leaves while they’re cooking, the better of a job I know that I’ve done. While I may have a tendency to allow my anxiety (and sometimes other strong emotions) to get the best of me, during the process of seasoning the meat mixture, once I’ve smelled my creation during its later stages, I’m immediately put at ease. If I were to mess up in some manner during the cooking process, I would probably be quite perturbed just as God was shown to be in the biblical section referencing the death of two of Aaron’s sons due to their flawed offering of incense to said deity (though I may not be upset to the same extent). On a similar note, just as Green identifies the ritual of sacrifice as having an effect on the “rapport between humans and God,” I believe that there is a form of communication between my outer and inner self that occurs as a result of the pleasing (and familiar) aroma produced by this food item. Generally I’m not a hyper confident person (inwardly), however, when I’m able to successfully make a dish that contains quite a bit of complexity in its overall makeup (due to the ambiguity of its exact measurements), I communicate to my brain that I’m a capable cook. Through creating a highly accurate replica of a dish that has long been a part of my family tradition(s), by primarily utilizing/relying upon an aspect of my physical person (aka. my sense of smell), I’m able to inwardly boost my ego (or rather, boost my perception of myself) a little bit. My outer (physical) capabilities help me to have (or rather, retain) a more positive outlook on myself.