Does everyone have a comfort food?

"comfort food’s power may lie primarily in the associations it calls to mind. " Shira Gabriel

I'm not at all sure why I was thinking of comfort food, but as I was it occurred to me that comfort food - well one meaning of it - is food that recalls happy times - most usually a happy childhood. By eating the food we remember the feeling of being loved and secure. And I know that many of the foods that I think of as comfort food - like the fish cakes above - are definitely reminders of childhood. So I asked my husband what were his comfort foods, and was not really surprised when he said he had none, for I know that his childhood was considerably poorer than mine and also maybe not as happy.

So what is comfort food? And I do think that we all have some kind of comfort food - it's possibly chocolate for my husband. Which confers a different kind of comfort. The comfort of indulgence in forbidden fruit. When I started looking into it I found that people have actually done quite a lot of research into comfort food and there seem to be a few slightly different definitions of what comfort food is. An article in The Atlantic gave a good summary.

The most startling thing was that men, on the whole, indulge in comfort food - whatever that might mean - when they are feeling good whilst women indulge in it when depressed or stressed. Women go for snacks and men for dishes. That is probably a very simplistic version of what that particular research has found but I think it's near enough. This research also maintains that it's usually sugar or carbohydrate laden food that is comfort food. We are all more stressed, we turn to comfort food - whether it be from a nostalgic perspective or a guilty pleasure perspective and eat the wrong things leading to the obesity epidemic. And I'm sure there is a certain amount of truth in that. When I was working and feeling stressed I would buy and devour a Mars bar. Definitely not healthy but it made me feel better, if a little bit guilty. I only did it occasionally though.

“comfort food” may be nothing more than an excuse to indulge in an old favorite." Health Psychology

But not entirely. There are lots of top ten, top twenty, etc. comfort foods lists out there and it was amazing how diverse those lists were. Some were downright healthy - ratatouille anyone? How more Mediterranean diet can you get? Some were exceedingly unhealthy - fish and chips for example - ice-cream. But they were very, very diverse. I could not say that there was one dish that cropped up over and over again. They tried to say chicken soup was it, but I don't think the research bore that out.

Because we are all different. We have all led different lives. We all have different backgrounds. Just think of the cultural differences. What is comfort food to me is certainly not the same as comfort food for the French, Chinese, Russians, Indians ... even the Australians who you would think were very similar to the English. And my comfort food would not be the same as a Northern English comfort food, or the food of a rich English person, even a middle-class English person. I have to say I lean to the definition of comfort food as a reminder of happy times. Although I think it probably has to be simple too.

“It seems entirely possible that all eating is emotional eating.” But there may be another layer in there, too: the possibility that all emotional eating is social eating—even, and maybe especially, when we’re eating alone." Julie Beck

So what are my comfort foods? Well now that I think about it there are two different types. Some that I remember with great nostalgia but which for various reasons I never make these days, even though I am not quite sure why. Into this category fall rabbit stew, lancashire hot pot, roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, fish and chips and Irish stew, stuffed roast lamb's hearts, rice pudding - yes rice pudding - I loved rice pudding. I'm not quite sure why I don't make some of them - Lancashire hot pot and Irish Stew in particular. I have probably been corrupted by too many rich French casseroles. And rabbit has become difficult to find and expensive. Fish and chips are a no no unless I eat them at a good restaurant - they are a guilty pleasure rather than a comfort food and lamb's hearts are considered as pet food these days. Then when you are cooking for other people you have to consider their likes and dislikes too.

lancashire hot pot

rabbit stew

I also see that these dishes fall into Nigel Slater's definition of comfort foods:

"The smell of dinner coming from the oven. Dishes that are done when they're done and refuse to be hurried into readiness, benign, good-natured recipes whose smells calm us like an extra blanket on a stone-cold night, and warm us slowly, thawing out our frozen souls. Meat that melts from its bones, broths that restore, flavours that reassure."

I don't think it was the smell though. I do like the smell of cooking food - there is something comforting about it - well unless it's burning or a really strong frying smell, but I suspect, again, that my husband really doesn't like the smell of food cooking at all. I'm sure he's not alone. Which I also think must have something to do with childhood.

Then there are the comfort foods that I still make today - Cornish pasties, sausages and baked beans, shepherd's pie, fish cakes ... I was going to say these were lazy dishes, but there is nothing particularly lazy about Cornish pasties.

But what they all do have in common is the fact that as I make them I remember making them as a child with my mum. Helping her mix and shape the fish cakes, and then rolling them in those awful bought breadcrumbs - which I really didn't mind, for I knew no better, helping her fill the circles of pastry with the mincemeat, potato, carrot and onion mixture for the Cornish pasties. And on and on.

And then there are the dishes that we did have as children which I do not class as comfort food, because I didn't really like them - Steak and kidney pie and pudding, liver and bacon. They are a curiosity.

Comfort food is a relatively new concept. Well phrase anyway. They seem to think it dates back to the 60s, though the concept must have existed before then. It just wasn't vocalised that way. Isn't language interesting? Nowadays it's a big thing. Jamie Oliver wrote a whole book on the subject. Food magazines regularly have a feature on comfort food - mostly when winter approaches - which is interesting because, for me, here in Australia summer is much more stressful than winter. Winter is cosy and comforting in itself. Summer brings the threat of fire.

So what is your favourite comfort food and why? Let me know. I think mine is the fish cakes - though a rather more sophisticated version than the one I had as a child. More herbs and other flavourings, and occasionally 'real' not tinned fish, though the concept is the same. I love the taste and the texture, they're very easy and fast and they bring back such vivid memories.