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Perhaps no one in history has gotten so carried away by the taste of a cookie — and one dunked in tea, at that — than Marcel Proust in “Swann’s Way.” His description of the memory of a taste of a petite madeleine: “An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses…I feel something start within me, something that leaves its resting-place and attempts to rise, something that has been embedded like an anchor at a great depth…but I can feel it mounting slowly…I can hear the echo of great spaces traversed.”

That’s a serious sweet tooth. Now I love cookies, too, but really, M. Proust, is this not excessive? And yet, there is something about the aroma of just-baked cookies that does trigger a nostalgia for Christmas at home, or rainy Saturdays, or a cozy fall afternoon of cookie baking after a crisp and strenuous morning of leaf raking.

Read the entire article in the November 2001 issue

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