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Like Grandma used to make

Even a liberal seasoning of nostalgia can't improve these culinary memories.

At this time of year, deep in soup season, I find myself thinking often of my grandmother's turkey soup. And when I do, I remember how awful it was.

Here's the recipe: Take one turkey carcass, stripped of every last trace of edible meat. Put it in a huge pot with a limp carrot and a brownish stalk of celery. Add too much salt and twice as much water as any sensible person would use. Boil long enough to make the house smell good, but not long enough to infuse the water with any discernible taste of turkey. Ladle the brackish, faintly poultry-scented broth into bowls and serve.

For years, I was baffled when people extolled the wonders of homemade soup. How could anyone actually enjoy this tasteless bowl of nothing? Finally, I attempted my own turkey soup, and I was amazed to realize what I'd been missing. Who knew soup had flavor?

I don't mean to dishonor my grandmother's memory with this story. She was a fascinating and beloved woman with a wicked sense of humor, a gift for vivid and extravagant conversation, an inimitable way with hats, and many other wonderful qualities. But a talent for cooking, despite her own faith in her powers, was not among them.

This was partly the fault of her times, not herself. I mean, who even wants to make salmon mousse anymore? But I imagine that those few who do would take the little round bones out of the canned salmon before they stirred in the mayonnaise. As for me, the memory of the slithery mousse and crunching bones is enough to send me screaming at the very sight of a fish-shaped mold. And let's not even discuss one of her favorite dinner dishes: boiled tongue.

She did do some things well. Her homemade mayonnaise, for example, was impeccable, and the deviled eggs she used it in were better than any others I've ever had. I'm still addicted to her recipe for party mix (you know, with the Wheat Chex), even though I now know that the secret ingredient is lots and lots of bacon grease. But then I think of her picnic sandwiches: the standard peanut butter, but with butter on the bread, too.

I know I am remembering all of this with a child's squeamishness, and that is no doubt making things seem worse than they were. But even from an adult's more detached perspective, I find myself fascinated by what my grandmother cooked, and by what she thought she was up to.

This is a woman, after all, who grew up like everyone else in her social class, with servants doing the cooking. But then, also like just about everyone else, she had to learn to do it herself. And, more than most, she threw herself into the task. She clipped recipes. She bought books. She subscribed to Gourmet. And then she made some really unappealing food.

What interests me about all this, I think, is that it goes against a fundamentally American idea. We believe in the power of positive thinking; we're convinced that, if you just work hard enough and want something badly enough, anything is possible. But I think my grandmother really wanted to cook well, and I think she really worked hard at it, and yet a lot of what came out of her kitchen was simply not food.

What also interests me is how nervous it makes me to say such a thing. We're all supposed to remember our grandmothers' cooking with great fondness, and to insist that nothing tastes as good now as it did in the olden days. The saccharine nostalgia that pervades our culture - thank you, Walt Disney - pushes us constantly toward an artificial reconstruction of the past. All grandmothers wore aprons; all of them cooked; all of them cooked well. Somehow it feels important to insist that that's not true. I'm sorry, but my grandmother's soup was just plain bad.

But I do wish she were here to show me how to wear a really big hat.