Find all the episodes of the series “False Good Ideas of Summer” here.
At the bottom of every liquor cabinet in France – for those who still have one – there is a slightly dusty bottle, four-fifths full, that we hesitate to offer at aperitif or digestif time. It is a bottle of limoncello, port, ouzo or any other drink brought back from holiday. The missing fifth, we drank a few days after returning, before telling ourselves that although we had really enjoyed our holidays in Italy, Portugal or Greece, in the end we were not that fond of them. traditional drink.
This is the “limoncello effect.” It refers to the mysterious phenomenon whereby thousands of sensible people each summer buy bottles of alcohol and other products that change their taste once they move away from their home. My cousins Basile and Clara brought back a bottle of pisco from Peru several times a year. It turns out that the taste for alcohol has mysteriously mutated in Indre-et-Loire. As for adding egg white to a cocktail, it is less appealing when you get home than in the Andes.
The limoncello effect is of course observed in alcohols (raki, chouchen, sake, Amarula, perfumed flowerpots, coloured liqueurs, etc.), but also in many other products. Experts on the phenomenon even believe that it can be applied to humans, when they try to find the person they fell in love with at a campsite in Sardinia in Orleans in the rain.
An ideal gift
But to stick to food souvenirs, it should be noted that all countries produce a soft, sweet pastry, which is sold at airports, which changes its name depending on the place – nougat, torrone, Turkish delight, giurgiulena – and which makes an ideal gift. My friend Frédéric, for example, never leaves Quiberon without buying three kouign-amann at the Riguidel bakery, but every year he is surprised by how they lose their appeal once they are at the bottom of his Parisian fridge.
Back when Frédéric went to Corsica, the campsite manager offered him a bottle of myrtle on the day of departure, but there too, once consumed in a Parisian F3 instead of at the beach bar, the alcohol changed its taste. Even more surprising than this alteration of taste is our inability to learn from it. Next summer, we will certainly return with a small vial.
How can we explain this strange phenomenon? Perhaps first of all because, as we know, we lose our discernment during the holidays. Perhaps the bottles of limoncello in the shape of the Tower of Pisa only serve to further confuse our senses to the point where we can no longer distinguish the good idea from the bad. Like a foreign tourist in France who, faced with a packet of coloured pasta in the shape of the Eiffel Tower, loses all his bearings.
You have 38.7% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.
