SpiceLines

As Marcel Proust famously observed, fleeting aromas can stir up long buried memories. The novelist’s madeleine, dipped in tea—or for me, the earthy, aromatic scent of cumin--so vividly evokes a specific moment in the past that it feels fresh and alive, as if occurring right here, right now.

In “Cilantro, the Flavor of Memory,” (The New York Times, September 10, 2010, Sunday Styles), Oliver Platt tells Leah Rozen of his own Proustian trigger: cilantro. “You taste it and suddenly you’re remembering the other times you had it and where,” he said.

Platt, currently starring with Laura Linney in “The Big C,” is the son of Nicholas Platt, a China diplomat and ambassador to Pakistan, the Philippines and Zambia. The film, TV and stage actor spent much of his childhood in Asia: The sight of cilantro on a menu at Num Pang, “a sliver of a sandwich shop in Greenwich Village,” instantly evoked recollections of Hong Kong, China, Taiwan and Japan.

The taste of sugar cane brought up even stronger memories for Platt: “I bit into that sweet, juicy pulp…and instantly I was riding on the back of a bicycle with my father through sugar cane fields in Taiwan. I must have been 4. The bicycle seat was rattan and I can still remember it poking me in the leg,” said Platt.

Do you have detailed taste or scent memories that you’d like to share? I’d love to hear from you.