Romance of the old kitchen garden

Considerable areas of our memory are taken up with food: it might be the taste of Mother’s sponge, the melting texture of an aunt’s buttery pastry or something recent, like the flavour of the first spoonful of a sour and nutty south-east Asian dish. Especially good meals are recalled with the same clarity as revolting school dinners and the stench of stale fish — we can conjure aromatic memories with ease thanks to the olfactory nerve, the brain’s cache of stored eating experience that helps us to tell good from bad when choosing what to eat.

Jennifer A. Jordan, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin, believes we should be remembering more than just the sensual pleasures of eating, however. Odd as it may seem, there are individual types among species of foods that are now forgotten. A little-discussed side effect of the last century’s seismic changes in both agriculture and eating habits is the loss of ‘heirloom’ produce.