Proust phenomenon
the sudden, involuntary evocation of an autobiographical memory, including a range of related sensory and emotional expressions. The term is named for French writer Marcel Proust (1871–1922), who described, in the first section of his multivolume novel A la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time), how the experience of eating a madeleine (a small, shell-shaped sponge cake) transported him in memory back to childhood. Also called Proustian memory. See involuntary retrieval; recollection; redintegration.