Food and cooking are the most indispensable part of life. It plays an important role in every culture. Being civilized, people in this modern world take great pleasure in eating. The relationship between food and emotions helps researchers discover human behaviors. People have evolved to love food because it keeps us alive and strong. It evokes emotions in humans and food itself is even believed to be an emotion. People who show emotions like love, sensuality, anxiety, depression, lethargy, irritability, cravings etc. are the result of an unbalanced diet. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essayFood and emotion are closely related to each other. Food is considered to be of paramount importance in the life of a human being as shelter. It serves as a key to understanding people's emotions and mental states. Food imagery has been used in literature throughout the centuries. Jane McCallum in her article Understanding Culture Through Recipes succinctly observed: "We are told that a society's culture is reflected in its eating patterns." Food and mood are basically considered to be a two-way street, the food we choose to eat depends on our mood. . Food is the only thing that keeps humans physically good and emotionally stable. Every organ in the human body produces some type of emotion. Particular food leads to a particular emotion. It is because each food attacks different organs of our body. For example, if a person eats a food or drink that damages the liver, such as fried foods or alcohol, emotions of irritation, anger, aggression, or impatience will be more likely. Foods themselves carry a wide range of cultural meanings. It functions as an object to express the most abstract meaning of social systems and cultural values. Immigrants often use food as a way to maintain their cultural identity. Both authors give greater importance to food as a signifier to express the emotions and feelings of the protagonists in their novels. Through the imagery of food they try to define the true identity of the characters because in many ways food defines people and their culture. In short, both use magical effects on food. Both novels explore a clear relationship with culture, food and emotions. Amy Bentley in her article American Gastro-Anomie argues that the study of food is a key to understanding cultures, societies and the lives of individuals within them because eating, after all, is much more than ingesting nutrients for biological survival: food plays a significant role in social relationships, is a highly symbolic element in religious and magical rites, helps to develop and maintain cultural distinctions and takes on enormous significance in the formation of individual identities. The food tradition of India can also be compared to the food tradition of Mexico. Like Indian cuisine, Mexican cuisine encompasses all the distinct flavors of the different cultures and influences it has been exposed to since ancient times. The culinary traditions of both countries reflect their rich cultural heritage. Mexicans have a vast and sophisticated culinary culture, with a wide variety of regional dishes. These are numerous religious and non-religious occasions in Mexico that are accomplished with special foods. Food works like a memory. Both positive and negative memories are associated with food. In Esquivel's “Like Water for Chocolate” food is symbolized as a signifier that shows the relationship with family, Mexican tradition andgenre through the protagonist, Tita. A young woman who is forbidden to marry the man she loves. The kitchen becomes his world and cooking becomes his daily routine after Nacha's death. Incorporate recipes into the book to tell a story. The recipes she proposes are not just formulas, but memories and traditions handed down from generation to generation. The novel opens with the act of an onion being sliced ​​while the narrator, who happens to be the protagonist's great-granddaughter, Tita. She begins to tell the story of how the women in her family are connected to food. The narrator then makes a connection to Tita's life and her emotions, represented by the sound of a newborn baby crying, and food is represented by the act of slicing an onion. Over the course of the novel, readers can perceive how the choice of a particular dish helps to define not only each female character, but also the Mexican national identity as a whole. Tita falls in love with Pedro. At a house party, Pedro proposes to Tita in the dispensary. In this scene, the emotion of love is connected to food. When she first felt his hot gaze burning her skin. She turned her head and her eyes met Pedro's. It was then that he understood what dough feels like when dipped in hot oil. The heat invading her body was so real that she was afraid it would begin to boil - her face, her belly, her heart, her breasts - like batter, and unable to bear his gaze she lowered her eyes. Mama Elena forbids Tita from marrying Pedro because it is tradition that the youngest daughter of the family takes care of her parents until their death. He then makes arrangements for Pedro and Rosaura's wedding. Pedro agrees to marry Rosaura just to be close to Tita. Elena forbids Tita from crying over Pedro and Rosaura's wedding. Order Tita who will be responsible for preparing all the food for the wedding reception. Tita is completely devastated because the man she loves is going to marry her sister. While preparing the cake Tita cries and her tears fall into the dough. Nacha consoles her. On their wedding day the cake is served to the guests. Immediately after eating the cake everyone feels a sort of nostalgia and starts crying and vomiting. Their emotions are described in the novel as: The moment they took the first bite of the cake, everyone was flooded with a great wave of desire. Even Pedro, usually so correct, had trouble holding back his tears. Mother Elena, who had not shed a single tear over her husband's death, sobbed silently. But the crying was only the first symptom of a strange inebriation - an acute attack of pain and frustration - that overtook the guests and dispersed... those who didn't join in the collective vomiting that spread throughout the patio. Mother Elena also goes first to her bedroom and then to the memories of her mulatto lover, Gertrudis' father. “Only one person escaped: the cake had no effect on Tita.” Tita's emotion of desire was transferred to other people through the food she prepared. In the sense that while he prepares food his emotions are transferred to the food and then to the people who eat it. In the end, her mother accuses Tita of having gotten the wedding guests drunk and destroying Rosaura's happiness. The next day, Pedro offers Tita a bouquet of roses to console her and tries to pull her out of the depression and loneliness caused by Nacha's unfortunate death. Tita clutched the roses tightly immediately after entering the kitchen. He doesn't want to throw away the roses. She remembers a recipe Nacha once taught her. Then she prepares quail in rose petal sauce with her potential love and passion that feeds Pedro. After eating the dish, Pedro becomes thepassive recipient of his emotions and the food prepared by Tita becomes the active transmitter of passion. In reality, the physical pleasure between Pedro and Tita is achieved through the consumption of food. Everyone in the family could feel some sensual warmth after eating the food, except Rosaura. Food creates an aphrodisiac quality. Gertrudis could feel the intense heat pulsing through her limbs and she was the one most affected by these sensations. She is taken away by one of the revolutionary men called Juan. Days passed. Rosaura gives birth to a son and Tita is the one who helped her give birth. Pedro goes to take Doctor John home to breastfeed Rosaura. The narrator describes the child's head as being covered in brown sugar: “It was shaped like a brown sugar cone because of the pressure his bones had been subjected to for so many hours. But to Tita it seemed like the most beautiful head she had ever seen." The child is wrapped in a towel and is compared to the taco, a Mexican dish as follows: "Wrapped like a taco, the child slept peacefully." For example, on another occasion, for Roberto's baptism, Tita prepares turkey mole. Since she loves the child very much, she carefully prepared the dish for the party. While preparing the dish, Pedro stands next to Tita in the kitchen. They both shared their feelings through their eyes. Everyone appreciates Tita for cooking such a delicious mole. She kept getting compliments on her cooking skills and everyone wanted to know what her secret was. It was really a shame that he answered this question, saying that his secret was to prepare the mole with so much love, Pedro was standing nearby,... Everyone, strangely enough, was in a euphoric mood after eating the mole; it had made them unusually cheerful. They laughed and continued as they had never done before and as they would not do again for a long time. Then later in the novel Tita is taken to Dr. John's house because she is deeply affected by the news of Roberto's death and acts like a madwoman. . So Tita's mom called John and asked him to take her to a mental hospital. But he takes her to his house. Tita feels free from her mother's clutches. Once Chencha, the ranch maid visits Doctor Brown's house to meet Tita. “Soups can cure any disease, both physical and mental, at least that was Chencha's firm belief, and Tita's too.” With this logic, Chencha brings Tita a steaming bowl of oxtail soup. They eat, laugh and cherish old memories and Tita feels Nacha's presence. The soup encapsulates all the emotions of Chencha's friendship and Nacha's love, so powerfully that the experience of eating the soup brings to mind Nacha's oxtail ghost soup! He couldn't believe it. And behind John came Chencha, covered in tears. The hug they exchanged was brief, because they didn't want the soup to get cold. At the first sip, Nacha appeared next to Tita. Stroking her hair while she ate, he did it when she was little and sick, kissing her forehead over and over again. There were all the moments with Nacha, the childhood games in the kitchen, the Christmas sandwiches, the smells of boiling milk... Just like in the old days, when Nacha was still alive and many times they had prepared soup together oxtail. Chencha and Tita laughed as they alleviated those moments, and cried as they remembered the steps in the recipe. Tita started crying after tasting the oxtail soup. John wondered if Chencha's oxtail soup made Tita cry and talk after six long months. Afterwards, sometimes, he returns to the ranch to take care of Mama Elena who is ill. Mama Elen died as a result of consuming the bottle of ipecac syrup which is a strong emetic and could bethe cause of his death. Meanwhile, Rosaura and Pedro return from San Francisco and settle on the ranch with their little girl, Esperanza. John decides to marry Tita and she comes to his house to ask Pedro and Rosaura's permission. Pedro feels jealous and tells Tita not to marry John. Gertrudis visits the ranch with her troop of soldiers and eventually marries Juan. Tita is so excited and makes Tezcucana style chili beans for John and his Aunt Mary. He comes from Pennsylvania just for their wedding. Rosaura and Tita argue about raising Esperanza. When he returns in a bad mood and discovers that the beans are not cooked, despite the hours. Then he remembers Nacha's words: Something strange was happening. Tita remembered that Nacha had always said that when people argue while making tamales, the tamales will not get cooked. They can be reheated day after day and still remain raw, because tamales are angry. In such a case you have to sing to them, which makes them happy; then they will cook.Tita discovers that the same thing happened with the beans who had witnessed the discussion between her and Rosaura. To improve their mood, Tita plans to sing a song full of love. She closes her eyes and begins to sing a waltz that brings with it images of her first meeting with Pedro and the moments spent together. While Tita sang, the bean liquor boiled wildly. The beans allowed themselves to be penetrated by the liquid in which they were floating; they swelled to the point of bursting. When Tita opened her eyes and picked up a bean to test, she saw that the beans were now perfectly cooked. From the above lines, the author underlined that even vegetables can feel the emotions of those who are cooking them. Aunt Mary appreciates Tita for making a delicious meal with beans. He feels so happy after eating them. When all goes well, Tita informs John that the wedding should be annulled. She says she lost her virginity to Pedro. With his eyes full of tears John leaves the house. Years passed. Tita and Chencha are involved in preparing a special dish called Chillies in Walnut Sauce for the wedding ceremony. Readers might think that it is Pedro and Tita's wedding but it is the wedding of Alex, John and Esperanza's son. After tasting the food, the guests' reactions were like: Your fellow diners were very happy. What a difference between this wedding and that unfortunate day when Pedro and Rosaura got married. Today, instead of feeling terrible longing and frustration, they felt completely different; tasting these chili peppers in walnut sauce, they all felt a sensation similar to what Gertrudis felt when she ate quail in rose petal sauce... Everyone else, including the ranch hands, made crazy, passionate love, wherever they were happened. Tita prepares most of the food in the novel and uses food to express her emotions because she has no one to share her feelings with. Tita gains excellent cooking skills from Nacha. Then he hands it to Esperanza. Esperanza then passes it to her daughter. So the wonderful recipes are taught to the next generation. In the novel Like Water for Chocolate, various types of emotions are transferred through different types of recipes. The same idea is found in The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender. The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake is about a nine-year-old girl, Rose, who discovers her own unique ability to find a person's emotions through the food that has been prepared by her. Consuming particular food items is one of the primary ways in which individuals can exert control over body, mind, and therefore identity... it is the first and arguably primary means of intervention on the body,the privileged instrument of self-control. The first time Rose notices her distinctive talent, on her ninth birthday. Her mother, Lane, makes her a special lemon cake. She feels her mother's enormous sadness when she bakes Rose a chocolate-lemon cake. Rose can't bear to eat cake. He says I could absolutely taste the chocolate, but in drifts and traces, in an unfolding, or an opening, it seemed that my mouth was also filled with the taste of smallness, the sensation of shrinking, of distraught, of savoring the distance. and with every bite, I thought – mmm, so good, the best ever, yum – but in every bite: absence, hunger, spiraling, emptiness. This act of Rose leaves her mother perplexed. Rose thinks a lot about the emotions contained in food. She later started noticing them in everything she eats and was also able to identify the origin of the ingredients used in the food. He turns to George, his brother Joseph's friend. Try to understand what is happening to her and who believes her completely. Like Joseph, George has a passionate interest in science and agrees to do some research experiments on his abilities. Although Rose's newfound ability fascinates George, he is unaware of her growing crush on him. He strives to find the remedy to his problem. He did several experiments throughout the novel. Various episodes in the novel are an attempt by the author to make readers understand the strong connection between food and emotions. Once she faints at school and is taken to the nurse. He asks about her health and Rose simply says that the food tastes bad. This wasn't entirely true: I had eaten a good apple for lunch. The recess milk carton was fine. But almost everything else - the cake, the chicken, the homemade brownie, the craving for the peanut butter sandwich - left me with varying degrees of the same scary feeling. Every time he eats something he can feel the emotions of the people who prepare it. He thinks there is a hole in the food. He could even sense the water where it was taken from. When the nurse gives her a paper cup full of water. He hears that the water is supposedly taken from a mountain spring that has been sitting in the plastic for many weeks. This is why water is like liquid lucite. The nurse finally says that Rose's illness is because she may be allergic to food or must be an active imagination. Once everyone sits down for dinner. Rose looks shocked. Lane hugs her and asks her to eat. He simply picks up the plate and says that "food is full of feelings." Everyone except Joseph is shocked by his behavior. When George is informed of her problem, he strives to find out what is happening to her. She is provided with some foods. Giorgio takes a sheet of paper and writes the list of foods in a column and all his answers on the right. «Half empty, I said, regarding my mother's leftover tuna casserole. Terrible I said, swallowing a mouthful of my father's butter pudding from a mix, left in a bowl." The following weekend George and Joseph take Rose to a bakery in a place called Beverly for an experiment. George asks Rose to get the chocolate chips first. He immediately bites them and also manages to understand what the ingredients are used and where they come from and discovers that the biscuit is angry, that is, the baker was angry while he was preparing the biscuits. He says that: At that point, after almost a week, I could resolve the onslaught of layers a little more quickly. The chocolate chips came from the factory, so they had the same slight, absent metallic taste, and the butter had been extracted from cows in the pens, so the richness wasn't as full. Theeggs were tinged with a distant and plastic scent. All those parts buzzed in the distance, and then the baker, who had kneaded the batter and formed the dough, got angry. A thick anger, in the biscuit itself. George asks what the mood of the man who made the cookies is. He replies that he wasn't in the mood while preparing them. In reality the man hates his job and doesn't even like biscuits. For this reason he gets angry while preparing them. It is transmitted through the cookies it has created. George then asks Rose to taste the oatmeal and the sandwich. She responds that the oatmeal seems rushed and that the sandwich tastes like some kind of scream. He says I took a bite of oatmeal. Same levels: now oats, well dried, but not so well watered, then raisins, half tasteless, made from dried grapes, collected by thirsty workers, then the baker, rushed. The whole cookie was so rushed, like I had to eat it quickly otherwise, somehow, it would eat me. After tasting the sandwich he discovers that "It was a homemade sandwich with ham, cheese and mustard on white bread.... overall the sandwich tasted like a kind of scream, almost. As if the sandwich itself was making me feel sick." screaming at each other, screaming love me, live me, really loud”. The young man at the counter says that the sandwich was made by his girlfriend. George asks him if he loved her or not. He just shrugs and asks him what do you mean by love? From his response they understand that he doesn't love his girlfriend as much as she probably wants him to too. George wonders how a nine-year-old can perceive these things just by tasting them. Whatever she says is true magical food or something." Then George and Rose compare the notes they took and verify that she can perceive emotions that not even the cooks themselves understand. They also discover that chopped and sliced ​​foods convey less emotion than baked foods. . Rose is worried about her problem. But George encourages her with positive words and says she may "grow up". Rose hates her ability to find emotion in the food she eats. He just wants to get out of the sense of tasting people's emotions through their foods. She once faints after eating her mother's cake and Lane immediately takes her to the hospital. Doctors have a bit of difficulty diagnosing it. In the hospital she is served noodle soup. “They served me a hospital bowl of noodle soup, which tasted like resentment, nice and full… I ate each of the saltine crackers, stuffed into their scratched plastic wrapper, made in a factory in East Hanover, New Jersey.” . As his new sense of taste grew, he could even sense where the salt in the soup was made from. Later the doctor gives her a cherry lollipop. He could immediately tell how it was prepared and where it was purchased from. But he couldn't feel any emotion of a person in it. “The doctor handed me a cherry lollipop, which came from a factory in Louisiana where, once flavored, hot sugar was cooled on a metal table and then imprinted on a white cardboard rod. Not a single hint of a person in it.” Lane pats her on the back and asks her to stay calm and not worry about anything. Years passed. Rose learns to tolerate the burden of her ability to taste. He started eating factory-produced foods so he could reduce his tasting problem. He is twelve years old. Once everyone sits down for a dinner of roast beef and potatoes. He feels such guilt and romance, but Lane seems to be happier while eating. Rose may sense that her mother is having an affairwith someone. Rose tries to spend time with her father and likes knowing that he has "special abilities". He remains silent but tells her that he is afraid of going to hospital. Even when both of his children were born he did not enter hospital. Lane's best friend, Sharlene, took care of her. Then the scene shifts to Giuseppe who often disappears from home. Rose suspects him. Once Eliza takes Rose to lunch with her other friends and Sherrie is one of them. When the others leave the place, Rose and Sherrie get into an argument. Their interaction finally allowed Sherrie to get closer to Rose. After learning that Rose has a sense of finding emotions, he takes Rose to his house. She prepares a pan of brownies on the spot and hands it to Rose. Rose promptly says that “Ugh, I said, muffled, reaching for a glass of water. You are very depressed." Sherrie puts her head on the counter and starts to cry. He agrees that what Rose says is absolutely true. But he doesn't explain why. Rose finally discovers her mother's different feelings for Larry through the food she prepares. She thinks it's something strange that a twelve-year-old girl can recognize such emotions in people. He also identifies his father's truth that his grandfather had the same sense power and he too had to face many difficulties due to this. Joseph's continued disappearance and strange behavior led her to think about him more than her taste problem. A few years later, Rose decides to use her superpowers for useful purposes. She spends her money on meals and starts traveling to different parts of the city as a food psychic. At the end of the novel, Rose learns that her father could sense whether people in a room were happy or unhappy simply by walking into it. Then he realizes that this sensory disorder runs in their family. Taste also refers to individual disposition. By comparing these two novels, readers could clearly understand that both authors try to explain their point of view in the same way but with different aspects. In Like Water for Chocolate the protagonist acts as a transmitter of emotions but in The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake the protagonist acts as a receiver of emotions. In the sense that both authors deal with the same theme, their protagonists could identify emotions through food, whether prepared by them or prepared by someone else. They also show how food and women form an integral part of the family and society in general. Laura gives more importance to her culture and tradition in the novel than Aimee Bender. For example, in Like Water for Chocolate an episode of sausage making which is considered a tradition among Mexicans and is described in the novel as Making sausages on Mama Elena's ranch was a real ritual. The day before they started peeling the garlic, cleaning the chillies and grinding the spices. All the women of her family had to participate: mother Elena; his daughters, Gertrudis, Rosaura and Tita; Nacha, the cook; and Chencha, the waitress. Many writers have used food as a part of their novels, but these authors took it as a genre to powerfully describe their theme. While Laura focuses only on the protagonist until the end of the novel, Aimee shifts focus and is reluctant to commit to a single protagonist throughout the novel. In the second part it gives importance to Joseph, his sudden disappearances and his transformation into a chair etc... Ariel Gonzalez of the Miami Herald, a newspaper from South Florida, notes that the premise of Lemon Cake is similar to that of Like Water for Chocolate, but nevertheless she is confident: Bender has guts. She doesn't mind exposing herself to an accusation of derivativeness. Its characters and the language that.