Personal History

Missing My Nana

Or, The Pound Cake Madeleine

Me, my mother, and Nana — 1978. Photo by Gus Eden.

In Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, he talks about how the combination of a madeleine and a cup of tea unexpectedly brought memories from his childhood rushing back. In the years since Proust wrote about his madeleine, the idea of a smell or taste causing the reappearance of a long-forgotten emotional event has become known as…