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The Forgotten Eggs.

The Forgotten Eggs.

The Forgotten Eggs.

On nostalgia, food and the loss of time.

by

Mihika Malhotra

3 min read

3 min read

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One cup softened butter. One cup sugar. Two teaspoons vanilla extract. One and a half cups of flour. Some salt, baking powder and finally, 4 eggs. Preferably room temperature.


It was my mother’s recipe for preparing the perfect vanilla pound cake. I remember one sunny afternoon in 2010 when she was preparing this cake. I was sitting on an uneven ledge on the kitchen counter talking about how my school day went. A stroke of sunlight was hitting the kitchen counter, exactly where she had neatly lined all the ingredients necessary for the cake. I kept talking, and she kept nodding her head.


Soon the cake was ready to be popped into the oven. That excitement quickly turned to dismay when I realised I had accidentally covered the eggs behind the polka-dotted dress I was wearing that afternoon. Consequently, the cake turned out quite crumbly and dense. Although I could see that it made my mother upset, to divert my fear of blame, she split the dense cake with her bare hands. She iced it with my favourite strawberry icing, and we shared it together right on the kitchen counter.


I still remember that cake whenever my baking fails me at times.

I still remember the moment my mother and I shared where the crumbs were stuck on the corner of our lips.

I still remember, and I never wish to forget.

I still remember, all because of the forgotten eggs.


Food has a peculiar way of refusing to remain just food. Long after a meal has ended, after the plates have been washed and the recipe card tucked back into a drawer, it continues to exist somewhere else entirely. It settles into memory. Looking back, almost every nostalgic moment I have held onto seems to have food quietly waiting in the background. Sometimes it is the centrepiece of the memory. Other times it is merely sitting in the corner, overlooked until years later. I have noticed this same pattern in the stories other people tell. Whenever someone reminisces, they rarely begin with dates or places. Instead, they begin with something they tasted.


"I remember the sandwich we shared on the subway before our final university exam."

"I remember the last family gathering, where Grandma made her famous trifle pudding."

"Every birthday meant doughnuts before presents."


These memories are never entirely about the sandwich, the pudding, or the doughnuts. They are more so about the comfort, celebration, grief, and the people who gave those ordinary meals meaning. Food becomes the language through which those memories are remembered. Perhaps this is because eating is one of the few experiences that engages nearly every sense at once. We smell before we taste. We notice texture before flavour. We hear the ruffle of fresh bread, the whistle of a kettle, the scrape of a spoon against a mixing bowl. While our minds are busy living through a moment, our senses are quietly recording it. Years later, they replay it without warning.


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This curious relationship between taste and memory, I discovered, has a name: the Proust phenomenon. Finding its origin in Marcel Proust's monumental novel In Search of Lost Time, in which the narrator bites into a madeleine cake dipped in tea and is suddenly overwhelmed by vivid childhood memories he had long forgotten. The odd taste transports him back to his forgotten but buried past. For a fleeting moment, memory is no longer something recalled deliberately, but something experienced again.


What is fascinating is that the memory arrives involuntarily. We spend so much of our lives trying to remember. Whether it's scrolling through old and torn photographs, revisiting journals or saving souvenirs, taste seems to bypass effort altogether. One unexpected bite can accomplish what entire albums might not be able to. A spoonful of soup may suddenly bring back the sound of the creaking door that your dad had promised would be fixed by next Wednesday. A particular spice may remind you of a parent standing over the stove before you even realise why it feels familiar.


Hence, the unexpected arrival. You try a dish in a country you have never visited, only to discover that it somehow resembles your aunt’s chicken and spinach recipe that she prepared once every six months. The flavour itself is new. However, hidden beneath is the laugh you let out when your aunt burnt the side dish of potatoes. Without intending to, your mind bridges decades in a single mouthful.


At other times, we chase these memories on purpose.


Think of every time someone has attempted to recreate their mother's lentil soup exactly as they remember it. Or the way someone instinctively arranges vegetables on a plate because that is how their older sister always served dinner. We inherit habits we never consciously choose. Recipes become traditions because they preserve these delicate gestures and mundane routines of ordinary lives. Even when the measurements are memorised, we often find ourselves stirring the pot in precisely the same direction as someone who taught us years ago.



There is something strangely human about believing memories can be measured in teaspoons and cups. We write recipes down as though they are complete instructions, but they rarely account for the things that truly matter. No recipe card tells you that your mother always hummed ‘Darlin’ by The Beach Boys while whisking the batter. None explains that the kitchen window was always open in summer, or that someone inevitably stole chocolate chips before they reached the bowl. Recipes preserve ingredients with astonishing accuracy, yet the atmosphere surrounding them remains impossible to document.


Possibly, that is why recipes on the internet have become infamous for their lengthy introductions. Before reaching the ingredient list, we often read several paragraphs about a grandmother's kitchen, a family holiday, or a childhood tradition. While many impatient cooks scroll straight to the measurements, those stories quietly reveal something. Recipes are rarely passed down because they are objectively the best versions of a dish. They survive because someone attached a memory to them. Without it, it is simply flour, butter, sugar, and eggs.


This may explain why childhood food almost never tastes the same when we recreate it as adults. We often fall back to the possible explanation of failure of our culinary talents. We might have used the wrong brand of butter or measured the flour incorrectly. That is, unfortunately, seldom the case. It is because, although we might end up with the perfect replica of the dish, we miss the kitchen we no longer cook in, the voices that no longer fill it, the versions of ourselves who had no responsibility beyond waiting for the dessert to cool.



There is something strangely human about believing memories can be measured in teaspoons and cups. We write recipes down as though they are complete instructions, but they rarely account for the things that truly matter. No recipe card tells you that your mother always hummed ‘Darlin’ by The Beach Boys while whisking the batter. None explains that the kitchen window was always open in summer, or that someone inevitably stole chocolate chips before they reached the bowl. Recipes preserve ingredients with astonishing accuracy, yet the atmosphere surrounding them remains impossible to document.


Possibly, that is why recipes on the internet have become infamous for their lengthy introductions. Before reaching the ingredient list, we often read several paragraphs about a grandmother's kitchen, a family holiday, or a childhood tradition. While many impatient cooks scroll straight to the measurements, those stories quietly reveal something. Recipes are rarely passed down because they are objectively the best versions of a dish. They survive because someone attached a memory to them. Without it, it is simply flour, butter, sugar, and eggs.


This may explain why childhood food almost never tastes the same when we recreate it as adults. We often fall back to the possible explanation of failure of our culinary talents. We might have used the wrong brand of butter or measured the flour incorrectly. That is, unfortunately, seldom the case. It is because, although we might end up with the perfect replica of the dish, we miss the kitchen we no longer cook in, the voices that no longer fill it, the versions of ourselves who had no responsibility beyond waiting for the dessert to cool.



Nostalgia, in this sense, has an odd habit of preserving the ordinary. I have noticed that whenever I ask someone about their favourite meal, they rarely describe the most technically impressive thing they have eaten. They describe familiarity. An off-brand packet of biscuits shared with a sibling after school. The potato pot pie their father always made whenever they scored well on an exam. Instant noodles eaten during late-night conversations with friends. These simple meals become archives of people and places. Preparing or tasting them years later feels like briefly visiting a version of life that no longer exists.


Unlike photographs or letters, food cannot truly be preserved. A meal exists only for a moment before disappearing completely. It asks to be consumed, and in doing so, it becomes memory rather than object. Maybe that impermanence is precisely what gives it its emotional power. We cannot place a favourite childhood dinner in a display cabinet. We can only make it again, knowing that every recreation is both faithful and different. The flavours may return, but time itself never does.


My mother's recipe still begins with one cup of butter, one cup of sugar, vanilla, flour, salt, baking powder, and four eggs. Whenever I bake it now, I never forget the eggs. But a small part of me is grateful that one sunny day in 2010 we forgot them.



Taken by Author

Taken by Author

@vaultedmag_


Nostalgia, in this sense, has an odd habit of preserving the ordinary. I have noticed that whenever I ask someone about their favourite meal, they rarely describe the most technically impressive thing they have eaten. They describe familiarity. An off-brand packet of biscuits shared with a sibling after school. The potato pot pie their father always made whenever they scored well on an exam. Instant noodles eaten during late-night conversations with friends. These simple meals become archives of people and places. Preparing or tasting them years later feels like briefly visiting a version of life that no longer exists.


Unlike photographs or letters, food cannot truly be preserved. A meal exists only for a moment before disappearing completely. It asks to be consumed, and in doing so, it becomes memory rather than object. Maybe that impermanence is precisely what gives it its emotional power. We cannot place a favourite childhood dinner in a display cabinet. We can only make it again, knowing that every recreation is both faithful and different. The flavours may return, but time itself never does.


My mother's recipe still begins with one cup of butter, one cup of sugar, vanilla, flour, salt, baking powder, and four eggs. Whenever I bake it now, I never forget the eggs. But a small part of me is grateful that one sunny day in 2010 we forgot them.




This curious relationship between taste and memory, I discovered, has a name: the Proust phenomenon. Finding its origin in Marcel Proust's monumental novel In Search of Lost Time, in which the narrator bites into a madeleine cake dipped in tea and is suddenly overwhelmed by vivid childhood memories he had long forgotten. The odd taste transports him back to his forgotten but buried past. For a fleeting moment, memory is no longer something recalled deliberately, but something experienced again.


What is fascinating is that the memory arrives involuntarily. We spend so much of our lives trying to remember. Whether it's scrolling through old and torn photographs, revisiting journals or saving souvenirs, taste seems to bypass effort altogether. One unexpected bite can accomplish what entire albums might not be able to. A spoonful of soup may suddenly bring back the sound of the creaking door that your dad had promised would be fixed by next Wednesday. A particular spice may remind you of a parent standing over the stove before you even realise why it feels familiar.


Hence, the unexpected arrival. You try a dish in a country you have never visited, only to discover that it somehow resembles your aunt’s chicken and spinach recipe that she prepared once every six months. The flavour itself is new. However, hidden beneath is the laugh you let out when your aunt burnt the side dish of potatoes. Without intending to, your mind bridges decades in a single mouthful.


At other times, we chase these memories on purpose.


Think of every time someone has attempted to recreate their mother's lentil soup exactly as they remember it. Or the way someone instinctively arranges vegetables on a plate because that is how their older sister always served dinner. We inherit habits we never consciously choose. Recipes become traditions because they preserve these delicate gestures and mundane routines of ordinary lives. Even when the measurements are memorised, we often find ourselves stirring the pot in precisely the same direction as someone who taught us years ago.


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