Homecooked

Tod & I were talking over dinner the other night about why homecooked meals usually taste so much better than restaurant food.
Is it the fresh ingredients? I don’t think so. Restaurants use fresh ingredients and so do I.
Is it the love and care put into a homecooked meal? Nice thought but I doubt it.
I think that what makes homecooked food taste so good is that we are in it. Minute flakes of our skin, eyelash mites, our exhalations. Maybe, if we used the tasting spoon twice, a bit of our saliva.
Sounds gross, doesn’t it? But it makes sense.
Our pans are “seasoned” with the oils of things that have cooked in them, so residual flavors contribute to the overall flavor of our efforts in the kitchen. The curry from a week ago blends ever so subtly with tonight’s cream sauce. Not that you’d notice but it’s there.
Also, since pantry ingredients are stored where they can pick up the odors of cooking and the household in general, even these basics carry along a certain signature scent. My flour smells just like flour to me, but a bloodhound could probably tell my flour apart from my neighbor’s.
For centuries, painters have mixed a bit of one pigment they are using with other colors in the same painting to produce colors with a harmonoius tint. It makes the tone of the painting hang together.
Why shouldn’t that be true for food, too?