Taste of comfort:
Zurich's linden blossom

Every June Zurich’s families used to go to the Stadtgärtnerei to borrow a ladder. With this ladder they went to the next linden tree that was in full bloom by then, rigorously collected the blossoms, brought them home, dried them and made tea for the winter. Until quite recently the city was covered in linden trees and there were plenty of blossoms to collect for everyone. Linden tea was Zurich’s signature tea, the taste that meant home. The taste that brought the joy of spring back to the long months of winter.

As honeydew began to threaten the glossy varnishes of cars, the trees were slowly banned from the fabric of the city. With their disappearance also the tradition and its taste started to fade. Today there are only a few people left that still longingly wait for the June bloom to come. For them, a sip of a hot cup of this linden tea brings back memories of a place that they’ve lost long ago. For Marcel Proust the madeleines from «À la recherche du temps perdu» had a similar meaning. They are referred to as «comfort food», although the term has broadened since then significantly.

While the collection of linden blossoms started to fade from the 60s onwards, the growth of the supermarkets of Migros, founded in 1925 in Zurich, started to accelerate. Today one could speculate that there are more Migros self-check stations than linden trees left.

1.95 CHF is the price for 1 pack of linden tea in a Migros Supermarket. The tea turned into a commodity, is packed in Germany, comes from Eastern Europe or Asia - which is hard to grasp for the average consumer. As David Harvey argues, the boxes that sit upon the supermarket shelves are mute, and its origin remains abstract. (3) The linden tea is a seemingly simple example of our food system - a globalized network of production that is multiscalar and highly complex. Like an iceberg most processes are invisible to us, when we walk to the next supermarket in a city like ours and buy whatever comforts us. The taste of linden might still linger in the kitchens of Zurich, but the meaning has changed as supermarket shopping became so convenient and ignorance so comfortable. «Comfort food» today is more about fat and sugar as a reward for the brain that gives us immediate «feel good», than memories and the sensory experience of a place.

Maurice Maggi told us about this story on a walk while we were discovering the edible plants of Zurich.

(1) - Proust, Marcel, and Eva Rechel-Mertens. Auf der Suche nach der verlorenen Zeit. Erste Auflage. Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2011. Print.
(2) - Migros Online.
(3) - David Harvey, Between space and time: reflections on the geographical imagination. Annals, Association of American Geographers 80(3), 1990, p. 423.


images:
1 - Comet Photo AG Zurich - Bildarchiv ETH Zurich
2 - Schweizerisches Sozialarchiv
3 - BSV
5 - migros.ch
6 - BSV