Emily Dickinson, Baker

You knew Emily Dickinson wrote a decent poem in her day and didn’t get  out much, writes Alecia Simmonds, but have you tried her cakes?

- Alecia Simmonds

Cooking is a way of communing with the dead. Recipes are passed on like family heirlooms and time collapses with each lick of the cooking bowl; we mix and stir our way back to the reassuring rhythms of childhood. I’ve been transported to my late-nanna’s home with a whiff of cloves, and sometimes fancy I’ve seen her rise spectre-like from the dust of bran and cinnamon. It’s for this reason that I leapt at the opportunity to bake 19th-century poet Emily Dickinson’s desserts – not because we were related, but because sharing her food felt deliciously intimate. If history is a dialogue between past and present, then historical recipes are like love letters between strangers across time. And the recipes left by these cooks from the past comprise an archive of the palate.