Tripodi, whose family has been trading at the Queen Vic Market for 50 years, starts work at 3am to prepare the stall for the crack-of-dawn shoppers. Some winter mornings, it’s warmer in the cool room than outside.

The arrival of cherries, one of Tripodi’s favourite fruits, is the first hint that better weather is on the way.

“So long to the cold dreary winter of apples and pears and not much else — the stonefruits are here … happy days!” he says.

But for Tripodi, the true taste of summer is a barbecue with a good cut of meat and a big flat mushroom sprinkled with chilli, oregano and olive oil, served with a tossed salad and with a bowl of seasonal fruit to finish.

“You don’t do that in winter, you do that when the warmer weather comes around,” he says.

Taste and smell expert John Patterson, a neurophysiologist at Swinburne University of Technology, says the way we experience food is greatly influenced by smell. There are five recognised tastes: salty, sweet, sour, bitter and umami – a taste Patterson describes as a kind of meaty, brothy flavour found in tomato, cheeses and meats.

In contrast to the five tastes, conservative estimates are that people can distinguish between 5000 and 6000 scents, but Patterson believes it is possible we can smell up to 20,000 odours, and perhaps more.

Smell, together with texture and temperature, contributes to the way we experience food. In summer, people are more inclined to eat to excess, he says.

Historically, winter was typically a time of food shortage. Our desire to eat in spring and summer, says Patterson, is not dissimilar to an animal’s drive to bulk up in order to survive a long, lean winter.

“Your appreciation of food would be more now than winter or autumn,” he says. “There is a psychological imperative – now is the good time, let me eat. We’re still influenced by all these primitive connections, even though we are not aware of them.”

Patterson says we also still favour sweet things such as honey, berries and nectar that formed part of the summer diet of our primitive ancestors.

This might explain my love of ice-cream – perhaps even my inexplicable penchant for Banana Paddle Pops – but I’m sure the heat also plays a role.

Jock Main, of Jock’s Ice Cream in Albert Park, knows better than most how the change of season affects the city’s gluttons. The queues at his shop grow longer and the simple flavours sold to go with winter puddings – like cinnamon and vanilla – make way for vibrant sorbets such as kiwifruit, blood orange and raspberry.

Main has been making ice-cream for more than a decade. His parents bought the former chef an ice-cream maker while he was recovering from a motorcycle incident. While he recuperated, Main hopped around the kitchen trying out recipes on friends and family. When he struck a winner, he added it to his book of recipes. By the times he was back on his feet, he had a new business plan.

When I ask Main if there’s a flavour that personifies summer for him, he presents me with a scoop of coconut lime. “This reminds me of being on holidays,” he says.

I can see where he is coming from. The lime is delicate, not tart, and the ice-cream is smooth, creamy and coconut-rich. It evokes a tropical beach fringed by palm trees. I want more.

Apparently today’s kids are quite adventurous, with flavour a secondary consideration after colour. ‘‘Generally, little girls go for pink (flavours), while little boys choose the messier stuff – like chocolate,” says Main. ‘‘It’s surprising the things that kids will taste.’’

Among the popular flavours this summer are Obamarama (peanut butter and berry ripple) and berry panna cotta. I ask which flavours he enjoyed as a kid, hoping for a confession along the lines of a Banana Paddle Pop. “I like chocolate or hokey pokey and I always have,” he says. “I grew up in New Zealand; hokey pokey is part of the culture.”

Fish and chips have been a summer staple since the long January school holidays of my childhood. Is there anything that caps off a day on the beach quite like biting through hot, crisp batter into a juicy piece of flake? The occasional speck of sand between the teeth merely adds to the experience.

Clamms Fast Fish is a Melbourne institution, serving St Kilda’s beachgoers for 25 years. Manager Nick Sethi says the Acland Street shop fries 40 kilograms of the fish of the day alone every day throughout summer.

“This is Acland Street: when it’s summer, I feel like I’m on holidays as well,” Sethi says. “Everyone who comes to the beach wants fish and chips.”

He says the key to a good seafood supper is simple: use fresh Australian produce. I try to broaden my horizons by sampling a kebab of salmon, scallops, prawns and mussels. The salmon falls apart in the mouth, while the prawns burst with flavour. Perhaps this is the start of a new summer taste tradition.

Associate professor John Patterson is not surprised that many of my summer memories are wedded to food. “It’s a season of holidays and good times,” he says.

Taste and smell, he says, play a big role in making memories – both good and bad. It is a product of our evolutionary history. “To survive, you have to remember what the good things were.”

Finally I head to Madame Brussels on Bourke Street to reminisce about idyllic summer food memories. It is the perfect venue: part of the rooftop bar’s appeal is the claim that up here, it’s summer all year round.

Co-owner Miss Pearls shares some delicious summer punch with me as we take in the Melbourne skyline. I sip a Gin Garden, which mingles cucumber syrup, lime juice, elderflower cordial, soda and apple juice with its namesake spirit.

For Miss Pearls, summer is when the plane trees on Bourke Street come into full leaf, when the waft of coconut oil appears in the air and the new rosés arrive.

“The skirts get shorter and the shorts get shorter and tighter,” she says. “People start strutting with a certain spring in their step; you get more smiles and more phone numbers.”

The foods that remind her of childhood summers are watermelon, lemonade icy poles and ham salad. On nights too hot to cook, her mother would make a salad using lettuce, cheese, beetroot, boiled egg, ham and, sometimes, tinned asparagus. “There’s a certain smell to canned asparagus. It reminds me of Mum and Dad and my brothers and sisters.”

The summer punch helps fuel our nostalgia. I lament that already, after multiple indulgences, the novelty is beginning to wane. I pledge to continue to appreciate summer’s delights right until it’s time for the tastes of Autumn. Casserole, soup and whisky, anyone?