Food Is Memories: The Tangerine

In her short piece Borderland, found in The Art of Eating, M.F.K. Fisher captures something that neuroscience would later confirm: food has the power to transport us across time and place, to offer comfort, and to create an escape from the weight of the present.

The story unfolds during the bleak years of World War II. Fisher writes of a young girl, likely herself, and Al, perhaps her brother. They had saved every coin they could to rent a warm room near the Rhine. Outside, troops marched by, the sound of boots a constant reminder of the war pressing in. Inside, on a heater by the window, sat a single tangerine.

She describes how the skin warmed under the radiator’s heat, releasing a fragrance that filled the small space. The moment was ordinary and extraordinary all at once. The tangerine was not just a piece of fruit—it became an act of defiance against the cold and the fear. A small, sensory indulgence that could momentarily dissolve the reality of impending dread.

Science Note: Why Smell Triggers Such Powerful Memories

The connection between scent, taste, and memory is unlike any other sensory link in the brain. When you smell something like the citrus oils released from a tangerine peel, odor molecules travel through the nose to the olfactory bulb, a structure that has direct neural pathways to the amygdala (emotions) and hippocampus (memory storage and retrieval).

This is unique.

Other senses, sight, sound, and touch first pass through the thalamus, the brain’s relay station, before reaching memory and emotional centers. Smell bypasses that step entirely, which is why it can trigger intense, emotional memories instantly and involuntarily.

Psychologists call this the Proust phenomenon, after Marcel Proust’s famous passage about tasting a madeleine and being overwhelmed with childhood memories. Research shows that odor-evoked memories are often:

• Older than memories triggered by other senses

• More emotionally vivid

• More likely to create a feeling of “being there” again

  
  

When M.F.K. Fisher warmed her tangerine in Borderland, the scent wasn’t just pleasant; it was a sensory key unlocking emotional safety and mental escape in the midst of war.

Food as an Anchor in Uncertainty

In Borderland, the tangerine becomes more than nourishment; it’s an anchor. In a world gripped by uncertainty, that fruit, warmed and fragrant, offers a tether to something safe and constant. The act of eating it is not just about survival; it’s about reclaiming a moment of beauty and control in the middle of chaos.

Psychologically, these sensory anchors can help regulate the nervous system. Pleasant tastes and smells can stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system, slowing the heart rate, easing tension, and signaling safety to the body. For someone living in the shadow of war, that could be life-saving, even if only for a few minutes.

The Enduring Power of Fisher’s Scene

The scene in Borderland has stayed with readers for decades because it resonates on two levels: it is intimate and universal. We may not have lived through WWII, but we have all felt the need to pause reality and seek comfort in something tangible: a cup of tea, the smell of bread in the oven, the first bite of a ripe peach.

Fisher’s tangerine reminds us that food is never “just food.” It is memory, safety, defiance, and love condensed into the sensory language of taste and smell. And long after the fruit is gone, the moment remains, intact in the mind’s archive, ready to be revisited with a single whiff of citrus.