On Sundays in her childhood, Kristin Butterworth remembers opening her grandmother’s front door in Johnstown and being met head-on by an enticing fragrance; It was two things at once — bread dough rising on the radiator and tomato sauce hours into a simmer on the stove.
“That was every Sunday, a core memory,” Butterworth says. “Before coats were shrugged off, before hellos, before we left for church as a family, there was the smell. She would make bread for the entire week for the entire family. When we came back from church, she’d start cooking the pasta. It was a ritual that brought everyone together.”
Even now, decades later, Butterworth says the smell of tomato sauce can snap her back instantly. “You smell it,” she says, “and you’re 8 years old again.”…