The scents of my childhood

You've given me the scents of my childhood. I said this on Sunday to an elderly Italian friend, who, having shown me the herbs growing in his garden was now plying me with freshly-cut bunches of them. Typically, like so many Italians I know from rural or small town backgrounds, he generously gave me, not 'enough', but abundantly more than enough - one handful alone was more than the combined contents of my currently tiny herb planter. I caught a waft of laurel's subtle fragrance, but then I inhaled, and inhaled again, rosemary's fresh sharpness, and sage's warm, earthy aroma, and... You've given me the scents of my childhood.

My mother grew these herbs in our south-west London garden, alongside parsley and mint. An excellent and enthusiastic cook, she used them liberally, every day, whether in something traditionally northern Italian, or in an Italianised, flavourful version of something English. They were the scent of Sunday roasts: stuffed into chicken, plastered over pork or beef, mingling with potatoes. Sage especially was one of the scents of so many things cooked in saucepans or frying pans: risotto, and sauces for pasta and gnocchi; peperonata and hearty stews; scaloppine and other fried meat; the breaded aubergine slices my father particularly enjoyed. In fact, the only dishes in which I don't remember her using herbs were chips, fried eggs and anything sweet!

There were other scents, too: crushed garlic, and onions slowly sizzling in a soffritto; the mushrooms we foraged for each autumn, and the woodlands' damp mustiness; roasting chestnuts... And of course, the intoxicating, mingled smells of Italian summers - watermelon, fresh basil, and focaccia, newly picked peaches, and cakes from Parodi - and the potent sweetness of the grape harvest in my father's village. And these herbs, always these herbs, underlying and stirred into every day.

The scents of my childhood, of Sunday roasts and risotto, and the plaintiveness of our cat, loudly mewling for scraps... all these memories, courtesy of some herbs, generously given, gratefully received. 

And you; what are the scents which transport you back to lovingly remembered times...?