Illustration by Shenuka Corea/The Gazelle

There’s a certain brand of coffee that we used to brew everyday at home, when I was growing up. The coffee isn’t grown in Texas – the place I call home – but it’s roasted there, with rich undertones of cinnamon, cocoa and vanilla. It’s not that the coffee itself is especially high-quality, but that the smell of it brewing filled my mornings for so long. It tastes like home, even when made in a dorm room with the cheapest French press I could find at Lulu’s. Before leaving for my second semester at university, my mother packed five pounds of that same coffee in my suitcase. She wanted it to last until I could drink it back home, in the familiarity of lazy summer mornings.

Comfort food is a term for a reason. Research has corroborated the connection between smell, taste and nostalgia. The olfactory bulb of the brain, which processes the sense of smell and taste, is linked by proximity to the area which stores memories. Psychologists have observed that these connections are formed as we experience the social utility of food: the capacity of taste to fulfill our need to belong. Individuals enjoy comfort food more after experiencing isolation. Food can act as a safety net, holding us up by allowing us to reconnect with the familiarity of home.

That’s why, after I complained of homesickness, my dad sent me a Texas Roadhouse gift card to use at their Yas Mall location – only to discover that it’s redeemable only within the United States. This explains the solace that a group of U.S. Americans and myself found several weeks ago at Chili’s, a deeply mediocre restaurant that my family only used to go to when we couldn’t decide where to eat.

Home-cooked meals provide us with a sense of security and regularity in an increasingly hectic and shifting world. I don’t care if you think that my homemade chocolate-chip cookies taste like sawdust and disappointment. It’s my mother’s recipe, and to me, it tastes precisely like belonging. Food anchors us. Mother’s casseroles, koftas, pakoray and pancakes make home truly home. I feel grounded in my grandmother’s Southern-style biscuits, which have been a Saturday morning staple in my house for generations. My father’s masterful use of the grill and an immense quantity of my mother’s baked goods were the things I knew would be waiting for me when I went home after a long fall semester.

Tomorrow morning, I’ll make my roommate the coffee that was sent to replenish my supplies in a battered box all the way from Texas. We'll sit in our dorm and complain that the coffee isn't nearly black enough to help us pass our midterms. I’ll revel in the embrace of a shallow, caffeine-tinged version of home while my roommate tells me about her mother’s famous vegan pancakes. It will be a good morning, the kind that will have to last us until we can eat at our own tables again.