Food is far more than nourishment. It carries memory, identity, and emotion. Through flavors, techniques, and shared meals, culinary traditions connect generations, carrying stories of place, community, and creativity.
Launched on 21 January and running through 15 March 2026, the UNESCO – Lee Kum Kee “Forever Flavors” project’s Call for Flavor Stories invited people to share the tastes, techniques, and memories that define how communities cook and remember. What it received in return was something far richer – a tapestry of culinary traditions as living heritage, carried across generations and geographies.
By the close of the call, 1,076 submissions had been received through the project website, RedNote, Instagram, and email outreach. Contributors wrote in from China, France, Japan, the Netherlands, Singapore, Malaysia, the United States, Canada, Pakistan, India, and beyond. From these, 88 stories were archived, with 67 selected entries published on the project website and social media channels, generating more than 2.5 million engagements online.
Taken together, the stories reveal how culinary heritage lives not only in recipes, but in everyday acts of cooking, sharing, and remembering. The entries move fluidly between instruction and emotion: some document techniques with near-clinical precision, while others unfold like memoirs shaped by migration, grief, reunion, and resilience.
Again and again, contributors returned to one central idea: food as a language of care. Many stories described families who rarely expressed affection directly, yet communicated love through the care devoted to preparing each other’s favorite dishes. In one submission, a contributor living in Gansu described receiving frozen ribs sent by her mother across more than 1,500 kilometers. “She never asks if I’m doing well,” the writer reflected. “Only, ‘Have you eaten the ribs?’”
Culinary traditions also emerged as powerful anchors for people living far from home. Many contributors wrote from the perspective of migration and movement: students abroad, young professionals in unfamiliar cities, or families separated across countries. In these stories, food became a way to preserve continuity amid change. For Ivy, originally from Fuzhou and later living in the Netherlands and the United States, red fermented rice became a symbol of belonging rediscovered through distance. “Wherever there are Fuzhou people in the world, there will be red fermented rice,” she wrote.
Others reflected on how food serves as a means of transmitting culinary knowledge, skills, and traditions across generations. “What we call inheritance was never just about recreating a flavor – it’s about passing on that quiet devotion,” wrote Sha Chunyan, a Nanjing native now living in Brittany, France. For Jess, who shared the story of her grandfather’s claypot rice, this transmission also became a way of reconnecting with identity and belonging: “I feel like I have this knowledge now. It connects me to my heritage.”
Yet the stories were not simply about preserving the past. They also revealed culinary heritage as something adaptive, creative, and constantly evolving. Recipes shifted across borders and generations, incorporating new ingredients, techniques, and contexts while retaining emotional and cultural meaning.
In the Netherlands, Oliver adapted Mapo Tofu for community kitchens by creating vegetarian versions using crispy shallots and peanuts in place of minced beef. In Hong Kong, Shen Ran transformed her grandmother’s crab paste steamed egg into a dish shaped by local seafood markets and contemporary urban life. “Recipes evolve during migration,” he reflected. “They become carriers, reflecting the changes in our generation.”
read more: https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/forever-flavors-stories-food-memory-and-living-heritage?hub=701
