祖传番茄（heirloom tomatoes)、白兰地番茄（brandywine tomatoes）、宇宙紫色萝卜（cosmic purple carrots）、粉红色珍珠苹果（pink pearl apples）、基奥贾甜菜根（Chioggia beets）。这些都是农夫小心栽培、厨师喜爱的食材。它们是美食界的传家之宝以及古董，都有丰富又长久的历史。虽然烹饪方式以及人们的口味会随着一代接着一代地改变，但是一颗Ribston Pippin苹果到今天还是跟在18世纪的时候味道一样香甜。在《回忆的味道》这本书中，作者探讨人们如何识别以及保留某一些农产品的老式种类。她认为这是因为这些蔬菜水果强烈地把人们的情绪连接到一个共同的基因、文化以及美食的历史。
 
拿祖传番茄来做比例，这个番茄品种来自于南美洲，一开始是阿智泰克人使用在它们的烹饪里，之后演化成富裕以及好品味的象征，同时也是现代“农场到餐桌”以及传统美食运动的明星食品。 在1940年，人们开始停止使用自由传粉的方式，导致市面上只有非常狭窄的混种番茄农作物。但是人们在1970年代因为追求回忆以及口味开始积极地保存种子，慢慢领悟当地的农作物是我们跟历史的一种重要连接。作者在接下来的章节用同样的历史学家加上人类学家加上美食学家的角色来探讨其他食物，从苹果到萝卜，带着读者回到过去又环游世界。
 
关于作者：
Jennifer Jordan是University of Wisconsin Madison的社会学教授。
 
好评：
Wendy Griswold, Northwestern University
“Although a lot of books have appeared in recent years about food cultures and foodways, none have analyzed how personal nostalgia and food politics are intertwined, sometimes in mutual support of one another (local heirloom tomatoes) and sometimes in conflict (green Jell-O salad, anyone?).  Jordan, who has done exemplary research on how memory shaped modern Berlin, is perfectly situated to examine the emotion work and emotion play we lavish on what we grow, seek, and put into our mouths.  Jordan is working in some of the most vital areas in cultural sociology: theoretically, a sociology of materiality and sensory experience; substantively, food studies and cognitive sociology; methodologically, interweaving of the micro-historical (personal) with the macro-historical (developments in agriculture, consumerism, nationalism).  This is an important book.”
 
Michael S. Carolan, Colorado State University
“Edible Memory reminds us that food isn't just something we eat.  It’s something we feel.  This realization shouldn't be mistaken to mean these feelings and memories are fundamentally an individual and individuating experience.  To feel is to be connected. This book, more than most out there that interrogate food cultures, tells a story about food that helps us understand its deeply sociological underbelly.”
 
Adam Shprintzen, author of The Vegetarian Crusade: The Rise of an American Reform Movement, 1817-1921
"Edible Memory deftly illustrates the power of food to create indelible, collective links to the past. Jordan's lively prose elicits smells, sights, and even similar flavors as those that the book’s subjects worked so tirelessly to preserve. Scholars, foodies, and the general public alike will all benefit greatly from reading this thought-provoking work.”
 
Virginia D. Nazarea, University of Georgia
“In Edible Memory, Jennifer A. Jordan weaves warm personal testimony with a formidable range of literature on the associations and attachments that make people long and search for certain old-timey fruits and vegetables. The memories she documents are both individual and collective, contemporary and historical, and span multiple landscapes from urban Chicago to rural Austria. Her arguments whet the appetite for more meaning in the way we gather, produce, consume, share, and ‘make’ our food.”
 
Sandra M. Gilbert, author of The Culinary Imagination: From Myth to Modernity
“Edible Memory is a compelling exploration of the lure and lore of foods that have become culinary ‘heirlooms,’ especially some kinds of tomatoes, but also apples, stone fruits, even leeks and turnips.  A meticulous scholar and an incisive sociologist, Jordan writes with verve and wit throughout this beautifully nuanced study.  Exploring the many varieties of culinary nostalgia, she avoids sentimentality while investigating our sometimes paradoxical yearnings for fruits and vegetables we may not even have eaten in our own lives and our curiously Proustian longings for (even) Jell-O molds and boxed cakes.  Her book is an important contribution both to food studies and, more generally, to the history of taste.”
 
New Yorker
“This study of the recent resurgence of ‘heirloom’ crops—tomatoes, apples, carrots, and more—examines the nostalgia and the prestige that surround them. The long reign of the smooth, bright-red tomato began in the mid-twentieth century, when large-scale farms found that standard sizes and shapes were easier to process and looked more attractive on grocery-store shelves. Meanwhile, gardeners kept growing the varieties they knew, whether green or orange, bumpy or freckly, pulpy or crisp. Jordan’s theme is memory and how food connects us to traditions. We are more emotional about some foods than others. Broccoli, celery, and cucumbers, it seems, exist on a B-list of vegetables that will never be widely appreciated ‘heirlooms.’”
 
Washington Independent Review of Books
“Jordan spins a tale of forgotten foods in Edible Memory. It’s not a cookbook, though reading Jordan wax nostalgic about heirloom tomatoes and other ‘antiques of the food world’ will certainly make you want to head to the nearest farmers’ market; fill your reusable shopping bag with cosmic purple carrots, Chioggia beets, and pink pearl apples; and then head right home to cook a feast. I’m a fan!”
 
Spectator
“Jordan believes we should be remembering more than just the sensual pleasures of eating, however. Odd as it may seem, there are individual types among species of foods that are now forgotten. . . . The very thought of a forgotten turnip is enough to get me thoroughly ensconced in Edible Memory. Jordan, struck by the sight of knobbly tomatoes in various colours at her local farmers’ market, wonders where they have been and how it was possible to bring them back from the dead, as it were — and also why we now love these new-old breeds so dearly. . . . Plantsmen and anyone who loves food will treasure Jordan’s book — it simply confirms that food is not just fuel.”
 
Times Literary Supplement
“What isn’t in doubt . . . is the importance of holding on to whatever variation we can in our rapidly homogenizing world. ‘If . . . one orchard disappears, making way for a handful of new houses or a parking lot, a single family’s memory vanishes, as do a few aging fruit trees,’ Jordan says. ‘When this happens on a larger scale, we lose something much bigger.’ If Jordan is right, we risk literally paving over paradise.”
 
Milwaukee Shepherd Express
“Jordan writes beautifully and with enthusiasm, reminding us that the crops we cultivate and the food on our table have changed along with social conditions.”
 
Choice
“Jordan charts her journey through ancient orchards, farmers’ markets, and modern supermarkets in search of both the reality and the fantasy of ‘heirloom’ fruits and vegetables.  . . . Located midway between scholarly and popular genres, this book .  . . could prompt a good classroom discussion of authenticity and the invention of tradition. Recommended.”