For as long as I can remember, friends have been synonymous with food. Like T. S. Eliot’s J. Alfred Prufrock, measuring out his life in coffee spoons, I’ve measured out my friendships over the years in myriad greaseproof-wrapped parcels. There have been salted caramel brownies posted across the country to someone I admired; still-warm cakes balanced across bicycle handlebars on the way to various birthday parties; homemade biscuits snatched from the worktop on my way out to meet the diverse companions of endless pandemic walks. Friendships have been forged in the fire of a hot oven, consolidated through the bestowing of a freshly-baked loaf or a tinfoil parcel of flapjacks still oozing the aromas of hot butter and toasted oats. When I think of my dearest friends, I think as much of the feasts we have shared together as of their faces. Like some strange form of epicurean synesthesia, my love for them can be mapped onto the devouring of particular dishes, the ambience of particular restaurants, or the minutiae of preparing a particular recipe. A close group of friends in London will forever be associated with the night we rustled up a feast that, owing to various last-minute cancellations, saw us eating an entire block of halloumi each. My best friends from university are inextricably tied in my mind with our annual New Year’s cheese feast, also featuring a chocolate concoction now referred to, following a memorable typo, as ‘desert mouse’. I cannot separate the thought of my friend Victor from the time I once watched in disbelief as he popped whole segments of raw quince into his mouth.