Marked-up pages, handwritten recipes … These are the best recipes you can have.
I have countless cookbooks and magazines as well as binders of cooking magazine tearsheets and website printouts from the past 20 years. And I am grateful for the test kitchen chefs at Bon Appétit and America’s Test Kitchen and all the rest. But the recipes I treasure the most are the handwritten ones that have been passed down in the family.
My grandmother once told me that her grandmother made the best bread. It wasn’t a written recipe, though. She just knew how to make it. She knew when it felt right and looked right. Making that bread was second nature to her. But my grandmother never learned how to make it. And because that recipe hadn’t been written down, it’s been lost forever.
It’s easy to see as an adult what a tragedy this is. My grandmother wishes she knew how to make that bread. And I wish I knew how too. But it’s also understandable why a little kid would rather run outside and play with her cousins than learn how to knead bread.
Generations of recipes
Last weekend, my mom, my son and I baked cookies. Every Christmas season, I make peanut butter blossom cookies. (It’s not Christmas without them, because my mom always made them when I was growing up.)
I think you can find this recipe on the bag of Hershey kisses. But I will never use that.
I will always go to my binder and find the recipe that came from my mom. Because I know she’s tested it and possibly made adjustments over the years. On my favorite pumpkin cookie recipe, I benefit from her notes where she has crossed out the spices and instead written “pumpkin pie spice” and given a new measurement. I will always use that recipe that lets me use pumpkin pie spice instead of pulling out multiple jars from the cabinet.
At Thanksgiving when I was looking for a pumpkin cake recipe, I had a few in different books. But I looked for the one in my binder … the handwritten one … the photocopy of the recipe card that says “From the Kitchen of Mary Conner.” I don’t know where my grandmother got the recipe. But I know it’s tried-and-true when her name is on it. And that’s the only pumpkin cake recipe I ever need to make.
My 2020 project: building our family recipe collection
When I cook, I’m happy to improvise, adding ingredients, making substitutions, adjusting measurements (and also not measuring if I can avoid having to wash another measuring cup). For some of our favorite family meals, I’ve made these changes so many times that I haven’t bothered to write them down. I just know my steps.
But I wonder what my son will remember. Will he want to make Mommy Chicken No. 1, Conner Potatoes and Mommy Popsicles with his kids? Nothing we make is especially difficult, but those flavors will remind him of a time in his life and a place. A feeling … one he might want to have again.
But if I haven’t written it down, will he be able to re-create it from memory? Should I expect him to?
So, for 2020, I’m working on our family cookbook. Something that hopefully can be passed down to my son and his kids. I want to document our favorite family meals, where they originated, how they’ve been modified. It will become a family food history of sorts. What are the dishes he loved when he was 5? What will they be when he is 7? How will those things change when allergies are outgrown? What recipes did we invent ourselves?
Legacy
In this week’s bonus episode of the Kiddos in the Kitchen podcast, Melanie Potock speaks from the heart about a family recipe and a cast iron skillet — and the memories associated with making candy with her grandmother as a little girl and continuing that tradition with her own daughters, who are now in their 30s.
If you are feeling sentimental this time of year (or are, ya know, human), you may shed a tear listening to Melanie’s story. It is beautiful and sweet and reminds us of the things that matter most.
When we cook in our families, it’s more than nourishing the body. There are memories that get locked away. A smell or a taste can bring us back to the memory of a person or a place or a feeling.
And it’s OK that those memories sometimes get locked away. But I don’t want our family to lose them forever. So, I’ll be doing a better job of making sure we have the key.