I’m sitting in the bar of a boutique hotel discussing finger food – prawns wrapped in brik pastry, black pudding and apple sausage rolls, egg mayonnaise sandwiches and party pies. Normally this would be a moment of happiness as I sip the house red checking if it’s OK for our guests. (It’s certainly cheap enough.) But this isn’t normal. I’m sitting with my sisters and we’re planning what to serve for my mother’s wake.

This is largely new territory for us, even though I know that reams have been written around the world about memorial feasts. Given that saying goodbye to loved ones after they’ve passed is something we will all have to go through – and during a time when you least feel like delving into something as prosaic as menu ideas – let me share my findings for the record and, I hope, some future benefit.

IT’S ALL ABOUT THEM

Books suggest that it’s nice if the memorial menu somehow reflects that person’s life or likes. Even so, I’m not sure if little plates of Mersey Valley cheese and a banana followed by mini Magnum ice creams are acceptable. This is what my mum seemed to live off for her last few years; I know that she isn’t alone.

TIMING

The Hindu tradition is for a remembrance meal to be held on the fourth day or the end of the 13-day mourning period, and for that meal to feature the deceased’s favourite food (served on a plate left in front of a photo). Another rich culinary funeral tradition in India is offering pinda (rice balls) to your ancestors, and these are then eaten by mourners. This makes me think that, given my cultural background and my mum’s time in Sicily as a young woman, maybe some golden, fried arancini should be on the menu for her memorial.

POT LUCK AND POTATOES

You need to decide your budget and if the food is going to be anything from canapés to a sit-down feast, or perhaps a pot-luck dinner where guests bring a dish to share. Pot lucks are common for commemorative meals in the US, featuring dishes such as funeral potatoes – which is a sort of potato casserole that nowadays is made with hash browns or tater tots (aka potato gems) cooked with cheese, sour cream, and tinned chicken or mushroom soup, topped with perhaps potato chips or crushed cornflakes. Yummy!

BLACK VELVET DRINK

Why have just funeral food when you can add champagne? That was the thinking at London’s Brooks’s Club after the death of Queen Victoria’s husband, Prince Albert, in 1861. They poured a measure of inky stout on top of champagne so it resembled a black mourning armband.

Related story: Matt Preston’s 7 favourite cocktails for summer sipping 

FUNERAL BREAD, BISCUITS AND SIN-EATING

Eating cookies, biscuits and cakes after a death has an ancient history that experts say, in all likelihood, is tied to prehistoric rituals involving endocannibalism (eating the dead of one’s own community to honour them). Italian ossi dei morti (bones of the dead) biscuits are deliberately shaped like bones, clearly showing that link. In the Middle Ages, corpse cakes – bread proven, or risen, on the shrouded body in the coffin – were said to help the mourners absorb the best qualities of the deceased. On the flip side, the English and Welsh tradition of sin-eating held that a loaf of bread or biscuits would be placed on the corpse to absorb bad traits. Then a sin-eater would be employed to consume the sin-sodden bread so the deceased soul could ascend unencumbered to heaven.

SWEET MEMORIES

If funeral biscuits seem too bleak for the occasion, there’s lots of sweet inspiration from elsewhere in the world. You could serve halva (a semolina sweet) like they do in the Balkans, Iran, Turkey and Armenia. You could also make a grand funeral jelly, fashionable once more due to the popularity of British food innovators and “jellymongers” Bompas & Parr. Within the Americas, the Amish make a sweet funeral pie filled with raisins, while Mexico does pan de muerto (bread of the dead).

Although a consolation feast is served after a funeral in some parts of Asia as a way of banishing bad luck, the Cantonese give guests white envelopes with coins and pieces of candy as a gesture of good luck.

As for me, I’m still in favour of some mini Magnums to remember my old mum. It will be the perfect sweet end.

Related story: 23 things you should never do at a restaurant, according to Matt Preston