Just like mammy used to make...

IT APPEARS we have a very serious case of ‘noshtalgia’.

The new limited edition milk chocolate Tayto bar with crisps may be hideous but astutely pushes myriad buttons for formerly-youthful epicurean experimentalists. Those who passed decades pining for Kola Kube-induced bleeding gums or that delightful dental disaster, the Blackjack, are fuelling a national epidemic of old-style sweet shops.

Exports of familiar food brands to recently-emigrated Irish abroad are most definitely on the up, and prawn cocktail and black forest gateau are in vogue once more, albeit served with a large dollop of post-modern irony. Much of this food revivalism is seen as a response to recession, a comfort in familiar old pleasures; the New York Times began reporting increases in confectionery sales as the current global crisis kicked in back in 2008.

Tony Linehan and his father Dan are owner-operators of the only remaining Irish manufacturer of handmade sweets, Shandon Sweets, in the Shandon area of Cork city. “When these new ‘sweetshops’ started popping up everywhere,” says Tony, “their selling point was ‘100% Irish stock’. At the start, we couldn’t keep up with orders but they found they could get something similar cheaper abroad. It was great to get the boost to the coffers for a while but they started to drop off one by one. But things are still good, we will always have our old customers, some for the last 30 or 40 years.”

The trend is certainly evident in the meat trade. “Things have come full circle for us,” says butcher Eoin O’Mahony, in Cork’s English Market. “People are now looking for what Mammy or Nana used to put on the table. A bit of brisket or corned beef, in particular — that had completely fallen out of favour. When the hurling championship comes around again, they’ll be mad for crúibíns, lamb’s tongues, even bodice, to chew on at matches or even watching at home. That is also coming back.”

Another English Market butcher, Tom Durcan, is also reaping the rewards for his legendary spiced beef. “Usually, I’d sell 500-800kg a year and really only over Christmas,” says Durcan. “Last Christmas, I sold 6,500kg. I now sell each week what I used to sell over the entire Christmas. It’s coming back into vogue. Traditionally, it was a Cork dish but it is now nationwide and even selling abroad. Their parents used to cook it and now younger people associate the smell of spiced beef in the house with Christmas and happy times.”

Currently, one of the more successful sectors of the Irish hospitality sector are ‘gastropubs’, with eating as important as drinking and the cooking style often harking back to a bygone era. Seáneen Sullivan is a partner in two very successful new Dublin establishments, L Mulligan Grocer and WJ Kavanagh, and they’ve almost single-handedly kicked off a Scotch egg craze.

“We’ve done it since day one, when we opened L Mulligan, three years ago,” says Sullivan.

“It’s very simple and people love it. Potted crab, and potted meats in general are very popular, and Mrs Beeton’s books are inordinately popular all over again.”

Ernest Cantillon, co-proprietor of Cork’s very successful Electric, is another to have realised the traditional pub could use a culinary makeover. “We rotate traditional Cork dishes of bodice, brisket, silverside, tripe and spiced beef,” says Cantillon. “Tourists are an essential part of our business and being so near to the English Market, we felt we should embrace it. But both myself and [co-proprietor] Denis O’Mullane grew up in Cork with this food and over the last few years, there is a huge retro movement. This food has come full circle — it’s cool again.”

Desserts are doing similar business. Killarney Park Hotel pastry chef Tracy Horgan says: “We may be a five-star but we are selling more of the ‘comfort’ desserts than ever. The bread and butter pudding has been on our menu since we opened 21 years ago; the recipe hasn’t changed but it’s still our best seller. And even though we don’t have it on, we’re getting asked more and more for apple pie.”

“We do a steamed ginger pudding in winter,” says Seáneen Sullivan, “Right now, we have a rhubarb fool and an Eton mess. We’re working on a rice pudding. And there are very firm opinions about skin or no skin, it’s quite contentious!”

Miss Courtney’s Tearooms in Killarney is nostalgia central but unlike other ‘Ye Olde Franchise’ enterprises, has genuine roots. Sandra Dunlea is the fourth generation proprietor, after her great-aunt, her grandmother and her mother. “I re-opened it only five years ago; it had been closed for four or five years,” says Dunlea. “For me, it was pure nostalgia. I wanted a place like when I was growing up, when it was my granny’s. I was lucky, the premises and its history were already there. I wanted to create this little time capsule. I had a very particular thing in mind, old-fashioned decor, tablecloths. No modern food, just simple home baking that looked like your mum might have made it — finger sandwiches, afternoon tea stands. I didn’t expect it to take off like it did but obviously others wanted that too.”

But this retro-revival has deeper roots than a mere panacea for economic woes; Darina Allen has been staggered by the emotional reaction to her Forgotten Skills of Cooking book. “It is the biggest response I get to any book of mine,” says Allen. “Once they go back and do some of it again, they discover it is not just about saving money but a huge feelgood factor as well, that there is a huge extra dimension to those skills. The whole collapse of the Celtic Tiger has readjusted many people’s priorities.”

Seáneen Sullivan says: “For us, I don’t like using the word ‘nostalgia’. We all lost the run of ourselves for a while with all this fusion food and exotic ingredients but I think it was something we needed to get out of our system.

“We are now realising the value of what we have — incredible Irish produce, for a start. We now have an appreciation of simple flavours, produce used in context. We do a turnip rosti and loads of people are telling us they never knew turnip could taste like that, so I don’t think it is entirely a nostalgia thing. To showcase the best of Irish produce, it just happens that this is the best style of cooking to do that. Rustic, simple, based on home-cooked food treated well.”

Curiously, many are nostalgic for a world never even experienced first hand. “In America, it is much more acute than simply reviving forgotten skills,” says Darina Allen. “There are several generations in many cases who have never seen anyone actually cook. The response to ‘What will we have for lunch?’ is not to cook something but to get in a car, drive to buy something pre-made and pop it in the microwave. There is a huge hunger to relearn or — even more alarming — learn the basics.”

The US nostalgia may even be for a fabled pioneer past. “The big thing in the US now,” says Allen, “is the huge frenzy for pickling, preserving and so on. In every shop and supermarket there is a pallet somewhere in a corner piled high with pickling jars.”

Seáneen Sullivan admits the Scotch eggs were inspired by her childhood reading: “It was very much about Enid Blyton books, the Famous Five, the concept of eating outdoors.”

For Sandra Dunlea, that ‘extra-curricular’ inspiration was cinematic: “Some of it is make-believe for me, elements you might have seen in the movies, especially the afternoon teas.”

But whatever her inspiration, the response is invariably the same.

“I get it all the time,” says Dunlea, “really lovely personal stories everyday of what it reminds them of — of grannies, grandads. A big one is the Stations, when the good china would come out. There are loads of customers who would have come to my grandmother and even my great aunt. It really makes people talk and they stay a long time. Summer is crazy busy here — that’s great for business but I almost prefer it off-season when all the locals come in to chat — which is how I remember it.”

Wake up to the whiff of nostalgia

The first thing is the sense of smell being so important in taste and flavour. Anecdotally, we would know it has the strongest connection of all the five senses to memory, so everyone would have a story of a smell taking you back to childhood. Say, your granny wore a lavender scent, you smell lavender somewhere completely out of context and yet it takes you right back to a memory of her.

The scientific basis for that is the olfactory receptor, which detects aromas, is an extension of the brain tissue, so the receptor cells these molecules bind almost have a direct line to the brain which is very powerful; all the other senses have to go through the nervous system.

When we start to smell and taste foods at an early age, we build up a recognition pattern in our brain over several exposures. Like a blank canvas, those first tastes are the most deeply ingrained and, therefore, the most strongly held in terms of connection and recognition.

Not only does the brain build up a pattern but it also builds it up alongside life experiences at the time, so you’re not just experiencing the taste but also the memories, particularly the ones from early in life. That could be a sense of place, going to your grandparents and being served battenburg cake or something you wouldn’t usually eat. Or family holidays eating 99 cones, the smell of the seaside. But in particular, you’ve got an emotional association as well, so if you’ve had a really happy upbringing, raised with a sense of security and a sense of safety, then you will associate those feelings with the smell or taste.

When things go wrong, when, as adults we need comfort if we feel unsafe, afraid, unhappy, almost unconsciously, we seek out something that will give us back a sense of safety and security. I would argue that it would be food that parents would have fed you, even more than childhood sweets bringing back that sense of safety and stability.

When it comes into comfort food as well, another aspect is post-digestive affects. Talking to colleagues, most examples were higher calorie foods, sugary or higher carbohydrates. For me, it might be mashed potato. The physical feelings would be warmth or well-being from a rush of energy being released into your system or, with sugary foods, the release of seratonin or endorphins into the brain. So, if you are feeling unwell or unhappy, it is something you would seek out.

You can talk about this on an individual level but also on a societal level, in the form of trends. In the aftermath of the crash, trends began to change. Everything was so dramatic at the time, everyone was scared of losing jobs, houses, lifestyles, security etc. With society having those feelings en masse, it reverted from a positive outlook, looking forward, taking risks, to looking back en masse for security, safety, the familiar, but familiar in a good way.

Darina Allen’s book was perfect timing. It arrived just as the trends were changing, no more going out to expensive champagne bars but staying at home, using natural ingredients and older traditional methods. It may not be entirely practical to switch over entirely to that way of life but it very much caught the mood of society.

There can be a strong tendency to idealise the past but if you speak to my parents who are in their 80s they wouldn’t necessarily recall in glowing terms that kind of lifestyle. They used to make their own butter, cure their own bacon, but they knew how much hard work was involved. There was no electricity, the butter was hand churned and so on, it was very much an idealised thing.