Family Recipes—Savoring and Baking Memories
In the late 1970s, my sisters and I undertook a family cookbook. The project started small—we planned to gather some of our recipes and those from our mother and grandmother. But then, how could we not include recipes from our aunts and uncles? Or our grandaunts and granduncles? Or cousins? Eventually we included recipes from extended family and beyond, like our grandmother’s long-time childhood friend whom my sisters and I viewed as our Mrs. Santa Claus. We topped out with recipes from about 100 people. Some family members contributed recipes attributed to long-deceased ancestors.
My sisters and I were busy raising children and pursuing careers. From time to time, we handed off the project to one another until we’d each worked on several renditions. By fits and starts, we mined for recipes at family reunions. We wrote, called, and badgered family members for their favorite recipes. Ten years passed with bursts of productivity as we gathered, organized, typed and retyped recipes and checked and double-checked ingredients and instructions. We finally pegged our completion date to our 1989 family reunion and sprinted to the finish line. My brother-in-law nicknamed our collection of recipes In-Laws, Outlaws, and Three Kinds of Cheeses.
This experience of gathering family recipes served me well. Several years ago, I researched the life of a great-grandmother to capture some of her history. At least three generations in my family called her Grandma Lou, and I had many memories of her, for she’d died when I was a young adult.
To learn more about her and to involve other family members, I identified many of her descendants who would have memories of her before she passed in 1969. While I gathered their impressions and stories, a common shared memory was Grandma Lou making chokecherry wine in her cellar. One of my second cousins sounded wistful as she said, “I wish I had her recipe for chokecherry wine.”
“Wait a minute.” I pulled out In-Laws and Outlaws and Two Kinds of Cheeses and flipped a few pages. Aha! “I have it.”
Because Grandma Lou’s chokecherry-wine making was legendary in our family, I wondered if there were others among her many descendants who might also like to have her recipe. I happily included it as a part of her history.
Later, while flipping through my family cookbook, I found 14 additional recipes we’d attributed to Grandma Lou. Her famous apple rolls recipe was one of my go-to desserts, a favorite at family meals and potlucks. Other recipes of hers ranged from how to make baking powder to peanut sandwiches, from ice cream to wholewheat bread. I added an appendix of her recipes to the history I was writing about her.
I also found a jackpot of mentions of Grandma Lou in digital articles in her local newspapers. Two of these included her recipes—one for rye bread printed in June 1969 and another for dill pickles published in September 1969, shortly before her death. I made digital images of these two recipes along with their source information. Then I added them to the appendix of recipes.
While gathering, writing, and formatting both the family cookbook and Grandma Lou’s history, my sisters and I learned a few tips about passing on family recipes.
Savor relationships
The recipes we gathered, typed, proofed, tested, and shared were a gift in themselves. However, the bigger gift was interacting with close and extended family. A call to verify an ingredient or instruction went beyond fact-checking—it was an opportunity to chat and connect with a loved one.
Choose your cookbook focus and readership
In-Laws, Outlaws, and Three Kinds of Cheesesfocused on recipes from multi-generations of relatives in my grandfather’s extended family. We even asked our young kids which of their favorite recipes they wanted the cookbook to contain. On the fly, one little boy at our family picnic made up a recipe for cucumber salad, which I included. Relatives in my grandfather’s extended family ordered most of the cookbooks.
In contrast, all the recipes in the appendix of Grandma Lou’s history were from her. I distributed them to everyone in the first three generations of her descendants whom I could locate.
I’m excited for you, because your collections of family recipes will have its own focus, flavor, and readership.
Gather family recipes
They don’t have to be relics from bygone days. They can be from any generation—starting with your recipes, and those from your siblings, children, and grandchildren. If you’re fortunate, you’ll have recipes you identify with your parents, grandparents, and other ancestors. Listed below are some good places to search for your family’s recipes:
- Start your hunt at home. You may already have some favorites you use regularly. Be sure to look at stashes of letters, journals, and diaries, emails, texts, and social media posts.
- Ask around and find out who might have inherited family cookbooks, boxes of index cards, or loose-leaf folders. Contact these people and explain what you’re doing. I find it helpful to state I don’t want their originals but hope to get readable digital copies or photos of the recipes.
- Contact a past ancestor’s remaining family, good friends, acquaintances, and neighbors. Ask if they have any of your family member’s recipes—or who might have some.
- Call the public library or historical society in areas where your ancestors lived and ask for suggestions where to look. They might have printed or digitized copies of pamphlets or newsletters that contain your family member’s recipes. Or they may have copies of community or club cookbooks used as fundraisers for local schools, businesses, or associations, and perhaps you’ll find in these contributions from your relatives. For instance, when gas and electricity first became available in some areas, local utility companies employed home economists. These women showed customers how to use what were then new-fangled stoves and also provided small cookbooks to promote electric or gas appliances.
- Search digitized local or community newspapers or other publications for your ancestors’ names on the off chance they contain recipes or mentions of food-related contest winners. I learned that Grandma Lou, at age 76, won first prize for her entry in a county fair for her crabapple jelly. She also won first prize in the category described as “Any other jelly.” I wondered if she had entered her chokecherry jelly. I don’t have a chokecherry jelly recipe attributed to Grandma Lou, but the family cookbook includes one submitted by her daughter, my grandmother.
| Tips: When you receive recipes, look at them right away. Do you have questions about illegible handwriting or apparent typos? Missing quantities or unclear directions? Cookware or cooking temperature and time? Family stories or historical context?If the person(s) associated with the recipe can no longer answer your questions, determine if there are other relatives or family friends you can ask. |
Help present and future cooks and bakers succeed
We can take steps to help present and future generations enjoy and pass on family recipes. For instance, I find recipes easier to follow when the ingredient list mirrors the order of these same items in the instructions. So, when typing recipes for the family cookbook, I sometimes rearranged the order of items in either the ingredient list or the instructions.
Address potential quandaries
Grandma Lou’s instructions for making chokecherry wine included, “. . . let set until fermentation stops.” When I read this over the phone to my cousin, she said, “How long is that?” I didn’t know.
Later, my older sister shared her memory of sitting at our grandmother’s dining table when the chokecherry wine bottles aging in the nearby pantry popped their corks. That evening, Grandma received a sure sign she hadn’t waited long enough for the fermentation process to finish.
Grandma’s experience confirmed that wine makers describe the fermentation process as complicated, requiring years of experience to master.[1] I made a note at the bottom of the chokecherry wine recipe: “Grandma Lou didn’t include how long it takes for fermentation to start—or until it ends.”
I also added an encyclopedic-type note for her descendants who had grown up in other areas of the country and might not be familiar with the main ingredient: “If you’re not acquainted with chokecherries, the fruit grows on tall bushes in bottlebrush-like cluster that turn dark magenta when ripe. Native to North America, it’s also called bitter-berry, Virginia bird cherry, and western chokecherry. The fruit is bitter, and the seed or pit is toxic. It grows wild.[2] We picked buckets of chokecherries about Labor Day along a creek near where we lived in southwestern Colorado. The fruit stains hands and clothing.”
Compare ingredients to instructions, and instructions to ingredients
Verify that the recipe includes every ingredient in the instructions—and that the instructions address each ingredient—that nothing is missing or added. For instance, while assembling the family cookbook, I received a recipe for sugar cookies without sugar listed among its ingredients. Other recipes listed ingredients not addressed in the instructions.
Other recipes included an ingredient without specifying a size or quantity. A second cousin’s recipe included a can of milk. I wondered, what size can? 5 ounces? 6? 8? 12? 14? 28 ounces? What kind of milk? Evaporated? Or sweetened condensed? The results would vary widely depending on her answer. I called for clarification.
Another recipe instructed, “put cake batter in biggest pan.” I had a pleasant chat with a grandaunt when I called to ask about the size cake pan she normally used.
The best way to check a recipe is to test it in your kitchen. I called another cousin while mixing up a batch of her M&M’S® cookies. I obviously needed to add something else. We had a good laugh because somehow, in the recipe-book-making process, two eggs had mysteriously dropped out of her recipe.
Define antiquated or uncommon terminology
Older recipes may include terms, kitchen tools, ingredients, or measurements not normally used today. One of my favorites in an ancestor’s long-ago recipe is: “Add a piece of butter the size of a walnut.”
While working on our family cookbook, I stopped typing, puzzled by the first ingredient in grandaunt Darlin’s spice cake recipe: “1 cup light bread sponge.”
I pictured grandaunt Darlin throwing a pink dish sponge into her cake dough.
Almost forty years ago the internet didn’t answer trivia questions, and the world was more relational. I called my grandmother and asked what a sponge was.
“What do you think it is?” she asked.
“The only sponges I know about are the ones that live in oceans or what I use to clean dishes.”
Grandma chuckled, then explained about mixing the yeast and some ingredients, then waiting for it to do its magic before adding the remaining ingredients. When I called grandaunt Darlin later, she didn’t have a recipe for her light bread sponge. Unfortunately, I didn’t think to ask Grandma or any of Aunt Darlin’s descendants if they could answer my question. Instead, I let Aunt Darlin’s recipe stand as it was.
Thankfully, Grandma Lou’s Rye Bread recipe included its sponge ingredients and instructions.
My grandmother had long passed by the time I worked on her mother’s history. Grandma Lou’s “Mince for Pies” recipe ingredient list contained “1 cup meat liquor.”
I called my mom. “What do you think that is?”
“Well, she sometimes added alcohol to her dishes. Maybe it’s some kind of brandy.”
I searched The Joy of Cooking, the internet, and the dictionary for enlightenment. Then I added a note to the recipe: “The dictionary defines ‘liquor’ as either ‘an alcoholic drink, especially distilled spirits,’ or ‘liquid in which something has been steeped or cooked’[3] such as a broth. Grandma Lou sometimes used alcohol in cooking meat dishes, but I don’t know what she used when making this recipe.”
Add notes to accommodate changes in stoves, cookware, and tastes
Grandma Lou’s apple roll recipe instructed me to bring some liquids to boil on the stovetop in a flat baking pan. I’d made the recipe many times before, but after receiving a new casserole pan, I thought the rolls would look pretty baked and served in it. Unfortunately, I didn’t make sure it was safe to use on my stovetop. I edited the recipe to read: “Bring to boil in stovetop safe and oven-proof baking dish.” Recently, my older sister told me she makes the recipe in a cast-iron skillet, and I wondered if Grandma Lou had done the same.
Sometimes individual’s and cultures’ tastes change. The apple rolls now seem too sweet to my younger sister, so she cut the amount of sugar in half. Her guests rave about them.
Add extras that tie to your family specifically and history generally
You might include a note to a snickerdoodle recipe that you made and shipped overseas to a son or daughter serving in the military. Or add a comment to your grandmother’s strawberry cake recipe you chose to serve at your wedding reception.
Add family anecdotes and stories about specific recipes
My Aunt Myrna baked her mother’s “Eggnog Pie” recipe for years. She included it in the family cookbook, and I used the recipe for many Christmas and New Year’s Day dinners. I also treasure the recipe’s story about Aunt Myrna’s adult son coming home for the holidays and saying, “Christmas isn’t Christmas until there’s eggnog pie in the refrigerator.”
Add family historical notes
Growing up, I ate my fair share of “Barker Dome Biscuits” at my grandmother’s kitchen table. Back then, I thought “Barker Dome” was an old-fashioned brand of leavening that put the small “dome” on each roll. When I learned my grandmother’s parents lived in a geographical area called Barker Dome, New Mexico, I gained a better understanding their history. And the recipe was a reminder to their descendants of their Barker Dome years. I added information to the timeline in my great-grandmother’s family history—and included her biscuit-shaped roll recipe in the appendix.
Choose recipe format
If you are using a custom cookbook printing service, your publisher will probably have guidelines that will influence your format.
Our home-grown family cookbook topped out at more than 150 pages in 17 categories, from appetizers to a wild assortment of miscellaneous items that included my nephew’s Play-Doh®-like recipe.
Play around and find what best suits your project. We compiled our family cookbook before software programs provided convenient recipe and cookbook formatting options. We typed the recipes in two-columns on 8½” x 11″ paper. Although it took more paper, I refused to break a recipe across two pages. To each recipe, we added its title at the top and the contributor’s name at the bottom.
Sometimes, you’ll find a recipe written in a fair hand. Fortunately, I had one such recipe in Grandma Lou’s handwriting. Unfortunately, I didn’t find it until after I’d finished and mailed her history to family members. If you discover handwritten recipes, take a good digital copy of some or all of them. If the handwriting is hard to decipher, add your transcription.
On the cover of our cookbook, we used a photo of my great-grandparents and some of their adult children. The 1930 photo depicts one of the first family reunions, which became a yearly gathering of our kinfolk for almost 90 years. We also included a one-page introduction and a list of contributors, whose names I’d placed roughly in family groupings of my grandfather and his siblings. I also added a group of names representing other relatives and close family friends. We sorted the recipes by category and had the document printed on both sides of pre-punched paper that fit in three-ring binders.
I wish we’d added page numbers, the cookbook title and year of publication on each page, a table of contents for each category, and an index of recipes.
Gifting
My sisters and I gave the first copy of In-Laws, Outlaws, and Three Kinds of Cheeses to our grandparents at our 1989 family reunion. Other family members, mostly on my grandfather’s side of the family, had ordered about 350 copies. We received a quantity discount and charged them only for the copying cost. I gave the copies I’d paid for to other family members and friends. The cookbooks made great wedding presents.
Grandma Lou’s history was 48 pages printed front and back, on three-hole punched paper bound in three-prong pocket holders. The clear front cover showed the document’s title and a photo of her from the 1960s. I scattered other photos throughout the document. I added a table of contents, introduction, and family tree of the first three generations of her direct descendants. The heart of her history included three sections: memories from 20 of her descendants, a chronology of her lifetime, and a list of all her descendants whom I could identify. Like frosting on a cake, the appendix included 16 of her recipes. I mailed the history as a Christmas present to about 60 relatives in Grandma Lou’s first three generations of descendants for whom I could find addresses.
Not only can we gather and share recipes, but we can also gift recipe books that prompt memories of family meals. For instance, my grandmother inherited Grandma Lou’s 1905 copy of “The Maramec Cook Book.” When Grandma died, I received the tattered cookbook and learned Grandma Lou had won it at a community event or a drawing at a feed store when she lived in Oklahoma. Now, 120 years later, her little 5″ x 8″ 110-page cookbook is missing its front cover and most of the first 20 pages—and the paper is brown with age. With it, we found a note in my grandmother’s elegant cursive handwriting identifying it as Grandma Lou’s first cookbook. The year 1905 was a momentous year in Grandma Lou’s life—for that year she married in March and had her first child, my grandmother, in December.
My son enjoys cooking, and he is interested in family history. I gave him his great-great-grandmother Lou’s cookbook, along with a handful of other small antique cookbooks, recipe pamphlets, and a small binder of my grandmother’s hand-written recipes. I later gave him a copy of a Blue Star Mothers fundraising cookbook I’d contributed recipes to in 2008.
From working on the family cookbook and Grandma Lou’s history to passing along family cookbooks and recipes to the next generation, I received more than I gave. For almost forty years, nearly every week I’ve pulled out In-Laws, Outlaws, and Three Kinds of Cheeses to make a family meal. But the bigger blessings involved interacting with relatives while gathering and checking recipes and also learning family stories. I also have peace and pleasure knowing my son and daughter-in-law are using some of the family recipes and heirlooms and preserving them for future generations.
Investing time and effort to collect and share family recipes can bring unexpected rewards while connecting and interacting with family members. It can also produce unexpected dividends. For wrapped between the covers of your family’s cookbooks and histories, you’ll find presents your family has given you—and gifts you can give to your legacy while honoring your heritage.
- Do you have helpful tips for others who are gathering and sharing family recipes?
- What unexpected sources have provided you with family recipes, or where have you found them in unlikely places?
- Do you have tips for organizing and checking family recipes to help future cooks and bakers succeed?
- If you’ve collected and shared family recipes or heirloom cookbooks, what was your focus when gathering them, and to whom and how did you distribute them?
[1] Research notes lost to time.
[2] Research notes lost to time.
[3] “Liquor,” Oxford University Press, Encyclopedia.com, (https://www.encyclopedia.com/medicine/anatomy-and-physiology/anatomy-and-physiology/liquor : accessed 2021.)