Tag Archives: multisensory

Chocolate, Poems, and Virtual Kitchens: Reconstructing the Early Modern Experience

By Sara de Blas Hernández

Since starting my Ph.D. journey at UC Davis, I have collaborated with Prof. Daniela Gutiérrez-Flores to enhance medieval and early modern Spanish literature classes using multisensory pedagogical approaches. The goal is to help students connect with the literary production of the time, one that often feels culturally distant, through tangible activities and familiar settings. For example, we organised a workshop where students nixtamalized corn to make their own tortillas after reading excerpts from the Popol Vuh and Chronicles of the Indies, we explored Fray Luis de León’s “Oda a la vida retirada” (Ode to a Quiet Life) in the Arboretum, and performed skits in the style of Calderón de la Barca’s small dramatic piece Mojiganga de los guisados.

The Reconstruction Project

In Fall 2024, Prof. Gutiérrez-Flores taught Survey of Spanish Literature to 1700, a course that explores the multicultural formation of Spanish culture through early literary texts. In this course, I wanted to explore the contrast between a traditional classroom model (reading, lecture, discussion, worksheet) with a hands-on experiential approach. This time, that meant asking students to turn their kitchens into classroom spaces.

In the first of two linked lessons, students read and analyzed Décima y coplas al chocolate  by Diego Hurtado de Mendoza. This playful poem compares the seductive power of women with that of chocolate, which the lyrical voice describes as a “dulce brebaje” or sweet potion (Hurtado de Mendoza, line 54),  and which is described as being intoxicating and overwhelming. This poem opened the door to explore chocolate’s journey from a suspect substance—viewed by early European colonizers as mysterious and dangerously invigorating—to a fashionable obsession, particularly among elite Spanish women, some of whom refused to stop drinking it even during mass, despite threats of receiving excommunication!

For the second lesson, we moved to the kitchen. We decided to have students cook from home, either solo or in small teams. I selected Juan de la Mata’s “Vizcochos de chocolate – Otra manera” from his 1747 Arte de repostería. At the beginning of the session, students were provided with the recipe —they had already been informed of the tools and ingredients they would need— and divided into Zoom breakout rooms to modernize the recipe by restructuring steps and estimating quantities and times needed. We all reconvened to discuss the surprises and challenges, and to evaluate potential solutions.

Then, we rolled up our sleeves and started baking. I hosted the session like a DIY cooking show: “Baking Early Modern with Sara.” I remember that we were collectively stumped by one detail: the recipe called for twice as much sugar as flour. When students asked why, I wasn’t sure. The mystery lingered until the next day, when I brought the cake to a screening of Like Water for Chocolate. There, a former student of mine majoring in Food Science offered a possible explanation: sugar was likely used as a preservative, especially in the absence of refrigeration. It was a lightbulb moment—and a great reminder of how learning often continues beyond the classroom.

Resulting chocolate cake. Image Credit: The Author

Once the cake was in the oven and with just a couple of minutes of class remaining,  I invited students to share their initial thoughts. To build community, I created a Canvas forum where students could share photos of their cakes and reflections on the experience. 

Screenshot of the students during the virtual workshop. Image Credit: The Author

Student’s Perceptions

To better assess the impact of the lesson, I asked students to complete a short survey. While some noted logistical challenges —like commuting home to use a kitchen—, most found the activity fun and unique. Others reported appreciating learning culinary skills and engaging with recipes in Spanish firsthand.  Several students noted how the physicality of “making” deepened their connection to the material: “I liked it and I think that it helped me think about these recipes in a more real way” and “It was very fun, especially because I could do something physical while still reflecting on the Spanish ways of the past.” One student shared being surprised at how much one could learn about a “mundane” activity such as cooking:  “I particularly enjoyed that, even though it is a cooking activity, there is a lot of history embedded in it, and we learned a lot.” 

Some reflected on the literary text itself: “While baking, I thought a lot about the verses of the poem, and I was able to imagine the lyrical voice when I was adding the cocoa powder to the mix.” Others offered powerful insights on food and colonialism: “It was a unique lesson like I had never experienced before. I realised that the foods that I have at home reflect a history of colonialism and peoples that I have inherited. Now I can see a more clear connection to the topics we covered in class than before. It is humbling… and delicious.” Finally,  several students highlighted the sense of community the lesson fostered. Whether cooking together in person or connecting via Zoom, they valued seeing their classmates in a new light and learning together in a shared, informal setting.

Implications of the Approach

Designing non-traditional lessons requires careful planning and flexibility, especially when logistical hurdles arise. But the results—deeper engagement, critical thinking, and stronger student bonds—make it worth the effort. This project reinforced what I have come to believe: hands-on, sensory-based learning, a form of “making”, can help students connect emotionally and intellectually with distant literary worlds. When students become “makers” through cooking, smelling, tasting, and collaborating, they not only grasp content more vividly, they also experience history and literature as something alive, embodied, and relevant to their lives. That is why these approaches deserve a place in the classroom, especially in academic settings where learning is still too often confined to the visual and textual materials alone.


Sara de Blas Hernández is a Ph.D. candidate in Spanish Linguistics at UC Davis. Her research explores the intersection of language, food, and pedagogy. One strand of her dissertation focuses on how food and food-related practices can enrich second and foreign language learning. The other examines experiential approaches to teaching early modern Spanish literature, working closely with faculty in literary studies, to help students engage more deeply with historical texts and overcome linguistic barriers.


References

Hurtado de Mendoza, Diego. “Décima y coplas al chocolate”. Obras poéticas, edited by Rafael Benítez Claros, Gráficas Ultra, 1947.

Mata, Juan de la. Arte de repostería: en que se contiene todo género de hacer dulces secos, y en líquido … con una breve instrucción para conocer las frutas, y servirlas crudas, y diez mesas, con su explicación. Biblioteca Digital Hispánica, 1747.

Retracing our Roots

By Anna Marie Smith and Tom Cook, Fatto a Mano Project

Into the depths of Italian culinary history, there remains a search for the most exotic pasta shape; a culinary journey into transitory perfection and ephemeral uniqueness. Then, lies the humble gnocchi. A lump. A dumpling shaped and formed by ​old hands crooked and weathered or tiny fingers touching raw dough for the first time. The singular gnocco stands alone as Italy’s poor mass of unhinged flour.

Image Credit: ©AZZAMARIE Studio ‘Ball of Dough’

Like the sculptor before us, gnocchi lies as a mass unbothered and unetched by shape and form. A gnocchi di patate, gnudi, or ricotta gnocchi sits below the base level of chef and restaurateur alike. Simple and manufactured as a starchy potato bomb, gnocchi have become a gastronomic black eye. To make them is above the Michelin guide, to buy them is embarrassing, to serve them​ pre-packaged…well, to some Italians, is sacrilege.

Gnocchi has its roots in cucina povera or poor cuisine and remains synonymous with terms like Malfatti and Gnudi (poorly made and naked, respectively). To touch on a memory of making gnocchi, one doesn’t need much. It is, after all, a ball of starch. But to serve the potato bombs that are boxed and shelf-stable for two years, one must forsake any and all concern for gastronomic indulgence.

Image Credit: ©Tutti’s Italian Market & Deli ‘Gnocchi Pull Detail’

Twenty-five years after high school graduation, Anna and Tom reconnected and found similarities within the work they had been doing in their respective fields (education, design and entrepreneurship). Over shared stories of their Italian-American upbringings, Fatto a Mano was born. Over communal memories, time was shared about our grandparents and great-grandparents’ kitchen table; Italian immigrants who worked tirelessly all day, made every meal from scratch, and set the table for all to gather every evening. This practice is not new or unfamiliar for immigrant families. Often, the matriarch planned, prepared, and served multiple course meals every single day. Hand-made pastas, sugos, meat ragu’s, and cold fruit for dessert.  But, as a child when you stopped getting the ugly scraps of dough and had to begin helping in the kitchen…conversely, your culinary journey shifted. 

The love language of food is one of service, not servitude; sacrifice, not submission. 

As children, the multisensory activation that occurred while helping our grandmothers and great-grandmothers was deeply imprinted into our beings, informing how we navigate throughout our lives. Contemporary research across psychology, design, neuroscience, and related fields increasingly investigates the interplay between sensory activation and mind-body integration through the lens of embodied cognition. Ellen Lupton and Andrea Lipps describe this phenomenon through our gustatory memories: “Taste, like touch, is intimate. It requires physical contact. Saliva is key—food must dissolve in order to be tasted, much like molecules must evaporate in order to be smelled”(99).  When we return to, and create, similar experiences in our respective professions multiple senses are simultaneously activated.

Anna and Tom recollect shared experiences of archiving recipes/memories on their own time, for special occasions, and with their own kids, nieces, and nephews. Realizing that they wanted to ‘officially’ offer these same experiences to others, they are embarking on a collaborative project that recalls a record of the time they spent in their grandmother’s kitchens roughly forty years ago. The FaM project is an open call to share both story and sensorial experiences with a broader culinary community.

Image Credit: ©AZZAMARIE Studio ‘Gnocchi Making with FAM Gnocchi Board’

Like craftsmen of any creative field, with repetition and time, your craft solidifies through the mesh created from tactile memory, sound memory, olfactory memory, taste memory, and muscle memory. A harmonizing of the craftsmen honing their skills.  This deeply applies to our gastronomic practices; a developed skill that Matthew Crawford claims“…if we follow the traces of our own actions to their source, they intimate some understanding of the good life. This understanding may be hard to articulate; bringing it more fully into view is the task of moral inquiry. Such inquiry may be helped along by practical activities in company with others, a sort of conversation in deed. In this conversation lies the potential of work to bring some measure of coherence to our lives”(22).

Cooking is a sensorial immersion. It requires little initial skill and keen eyes; watching and listening transcends recipe de-construction. So, it is with food that we travel onto a path paved by memory and meaning-making. As the most important experiential quest we embark upon, we would argue that fatto a mano– handmade–is both sign and signifier of our greatest human memories. Why we make the argument for a retreat back to the roots of cooking, by hand, in our kitchens relies upon utilizing multisensory engagement that solidifies stories (old and new), satisfaction (basic needs), self sufficiency (growth). The orality of tradition is only provided by time spent together with the gatekeepers of that history. 

If art imitates life, then our tables emulate our values. This is not a call to “make” a recipe, but rather a cry to make a meal. Together. This isn’t just an investment, it’s a return to what matters  — making, failing, learning — together.

Image Credit: ©AZZAMARIE Studio ‘Rucco Ricotta Gnocchi Recipe’

Anna Marie Smith is a designer and Assistant Professor of Industrial Design at James Madison University. Anna has been learning through making since she was a little girl, playing with dough scraps in her family’s pizzeria. As a designer, she is a cross-pollinator who has worked in performing arts, education, and design direction. As an educator, she is passing on the hand-making modality of her Italian-American heritage, in the space where craftsmanship, design, food, and making co-exist.

Tom Cook is an Adjunct Lecturer in the English Department at The University of North Carolina-Charlotte and the owner/operator of Tutti’s Italian Market and Deli in Concord, NC. As a proud Italian-American, Tom uses both his classroom and the deli to teach others about the power of food and what it communicates about our stories and identities.

Cook and Smith are co-directors of the Fatto a Mano Project. In its inaugural year, the FAM Project has started to compile research, collect data, recreate recipes from memory, make tools, make food, present workshops and record the process along the way. They are currently securing workshops for the later half of 2025, and aim to have published content in the coming months. 


References

Cinotto, Simone. The Italian American Table : Food, Family, and Community in New York City, University of Illinois Press, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central

 Crawford, Matthew B. Shop Class As Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work, Penguin Press, 2009. 

Lupton, Ellen, and Andrea Lipps. The Senses: Design Beyond Vision, Princeton Architectural Press, New York, New York, 2018.

Pastorelli, Elisa. “Orality and Multi-Sensoriality: the Secret Ingredients of Food’s Longevity and the Power of Memory.” The Recipes Project. February 11, 2024.