How Do You Preserve Family Recipes? | Cup of Jo (2024)

I have a question. I’m retired and about two years ago I went through my mom’s, grandma and my recipes. I have about 5 recipe boxes sorted by casseroles, salads, desserts etc for each one. There are probably at least 100 recipes in each box. 70 percent I’ve never made. I’m sentimental since my mom and grandma have both passed. Should I pitch the ones I haven’t made?

I copied and framed recipes from both my mother and mother in law – they hang in my kitchen – wish I would have thought to get handwritten recipes from my grandmothers :(

one of my favorite gifts I have ever received was a cookbook handwritten by my family with everyone’s favorite recipes. I got it my first Christmas after I moved into my first house. I’ve added to it over the years and i hope to pass it on to my kids when they’re old enough.

I recently made, for my mother, a photo book of her mother’s recipes. I scanned in the physical cards, and also typed the recipes, so they would be really clear. And included family photos. She LOVED it! My cousins joined in and ordered copies for their parents as well. I used Mixbook. It was so easy!

I love this discussion! In my case hardly any recipe was written down, my mom knew all of them by heart and around 5 years ago I started documenting them, taking photos of each dish, and writing down the process. Then I put them all together in a book I printed with Blurb: http://www.agusyornet.com/2020/04/doing-cookbook-how-i-decided-to.html

Last year I made my teenage kids an advent calendar: One tried-and-true recipe per day, printed and laminated, plus a book to stick them in on the 24th. My daughter then requested a fully-year recipe calendar for her birthday … not sure I can manage :-)

I’ve seen a Spoonflower tutorial where you upload photos of the handwritten recipes to be printed onto fabric – for teatowels! I love the idea, and hope to do it one day… such a great family christmas gift idea.

For Granny’s 90th birthday in 2016, my mum asked all her 8 children and 16 grandkids to write a short note about a favorite food she made. We are a family scattered all over the world, with granny holding down the fort in Malaysia. Someone is always visiting, so she has always been busy making ‘special treats’ for visitors.
My Mum, her eldest daughter, turned the collection of short snippets, along with recipes into a glorious book. Her 90th birthday was also the last time we were ALL home together with her.
This pandemic year has had none of us traveling to Malaysia. She will be 95 in October, and we stay in touch via Facetime. The saving grace, has been this recipe book. We have made as many recipes as we can, calling her for advise and sharing our baking success and fails. This book has been magic – but I won’t lie, I miss my grandmother immensely.

Every Thanksgiving and Christmas my grandma makes… *the rolls* Yeasty, fluffy, tiny rolls that take about 5 hours to make and are essentially butter held together with a little flour. The cousins used to have contests to see who could eat the most, but now that we’re closer to 40 than 15, we politely eat 3.. or 4…… A couple of years ago my grandma tripped and broke her wrist, so my sister and I were tasked with the making of *the rolls* – which turned out to be a really good thing, because our test batch turned into several test batches and about 5 calls to Grandma. Despite her assurances that she followed the recipe (photocopied out of a magazine however many years ago) exactly, it turned out that there were quite a few tweaks she’d incorporated over the years! Thank God she’s alive and well, turning 94 this summer and her biggest complaint is pandemic boredom, missing her busy social calendar… but I’ll always be thankful we didn’t wait until it was too late to fill the photocopied page with her notes so we can make those rolls the right way, forever.

I recently did an Instagram Story sharing my dad’s Czech pancake recipe but mostly wanted a visual record of it as it’s been a childhood favourite of mine but I never remember how to make them. It seemed to bring a lot of people joy so I’m thinking of continuing a series of my dad going step-by-step sharing family recipes! The video element also helps because he doesn’t measure anything and just *~*feeeeels*~* it out.

For my wedding, I made a custom cookbook as a favor for all my guests. I asked each of the people invited to the wedding to send us favorite recipes, and I included all of the classic dishes I wanted to pass on to any future kids. Since then, as I add new favorites to my repertoire, I write them into the blank spaces that were left throughout the book. I also saved about 15 of them, so I can pass them on to folks who weren’t at the wedding. I was so touched this year when my nephew, who was my ringbearer, asked for a copy as his high school graduation present this year. One of the best projects I’ve ever done.

About 10 years ago I converted my fat file of collected recipes into a binder using page protectors. Included are recipes my mom wrote down, menus from past parties, the bean soup I made all the time in college and recipes written down for us when we were married. I use this binder weekly, and my kids reference it often. Best of all, if I find a favorite recipe on the internet, I can print it and save it for later use.

Random aside but the cabinet in the last photo looks EXACTLY like mine: the tall shelf for the vinegars and oils, then short shelf for the baking powder and vanilla extract, then medium shelf for the honey and medium baking things. Even the sugar, etc. in the leftover jam jar or whatever. (I’m sure this is the same as like 70% of people, probably, but the familiarity struck me.)

For my cousin’s 40th birthday, I collected recipes from family members (including some the our shared grandmother used to make) and made a recipe book for her (I think I used blurb). It was so much fun to do, and I made a copy for myself which was a great move – I use it all the time for cake recipes. It turns out our family is really into making cake. I would love to do the same for my husband’s side of the family. His grandmothers were AMAZING cooks and bakers. One used to borrow the oven from the bakery downstairs when she made all her pastries for Purim and she used to hand make couscous every Friday night for her children.

I was not expecting to cry so much reading these comments. Thank you, everyone, for the inspiration to better codify my favorite hobby and the courage to ask my elders to share their wisdom. And thank you, Jenny, for creating the space. xo

I would like to share a French project with you that I find beautiful and moving (probably even more so now). The idea is to film her grandparent making her childhood’s favorite recipe. Everything is collected on this website: http://grandmasproject.org/fr/

One of the best Christmas gifts I received : my mother collected recipes from her family (mandatory handwritten) and then in a photo album with stacked horizontal photos : each page was a photo of the family member with their recipe in the sleeve below. I cried. Its the most amazing way to carry their favorite recipes with me forever.

Not charming but intensely practical: I store all my recipes on Trello. You can create boards by theme (dinner parties, tried and true favorites, things I want to try) and then type in the recipe or add a link.

I’m so lucky that my mom was the chair of her Junior League Cook Book Committee and she snuck all of my grandmother’s favorite family recipes into the book, so I now have them all in one place.

My mom was never an avid cook but she had some staples that were tasty and memorable. She has Alzheimer’s now and it never occurred to me during the loss of her memory to gather them for safe keeping. Well, during quarantine I found her very old Betty Crocker cookbook -tattered, stained etc. and discovered some of her treasures of my childhood in there. It’s been such a joy and comfort. My new favorite cookbook.

My mom was pretty sheltered growing up and didn’t learn how to cook from her mother. Her mother passed away when she was just in her teens. So, when she married my dad she didn’t know how to boil water. Over the years my paternal grandmother taught her to cook pretty much everything that my mother knows how to cook now. She’s an amazing cook who will whip up 10 apple pies and 10 meat pies out of the blue. When she made homemade bread growing up she didn’t make 1-2 loaves, it was more like 15-20. I’ve always understood the value in learning from her so I know how to make her pies, her turkey stuffing, and certain family meals. The men in my family are good cooks as well and my dad taught me how to clean fish and cook different fish dishes, how to make traditional Mi’kmaq bread (Luskinigan) and d’oh boys for stews. This year I sat down with my mother to talk with her and write down her most special recipes. Then I printed copies and put them in blank cook books which I gave to each of my siblings for Christmas. I like to try cooking different things so anything I make from the internet I print out and put a copy in my spice cupboard to use again.

When my mother passed away I edited a book with all the recipes she liked (hers but also from family and friends). She made the work easier because she had prepared a document called “La cocina de Mama”. A graphic designer did the editing and we added lots of pictures of her. I added a subtitle “From paella to guefilte fish”. Because her recipes where her life; a mix of Ashkenazi roots, Argentinean childhood and emigration to Europe. My aim was for her grandchildren to know who she was through her cooking and I think it worked.

My mom passed away from cancer almost two years ago. She was a wonderful baker and cook! Long after leaving the house I would call her with questions about cooking and baking for my family. While she had been fighting cancer I had the thought to make a cookbook of all her recipes for my family, at first I wanted it to be a surprise for her, but I soon realized I would need her input. When I asked her she was in hospice and I worried she would be too tired, but she perked up and loved the idea. I’m so glad I asked her! I learned a lot about her recipes, history, how she changed a recipe from the original, little anecdotes and she added a lot of recipes that I wouldn’t have remembered to add myself. She actually passed away 3 days later, it was out last project together. It is a treasure! And know when I can’t call her to get her help with a recipe, I can look in my cookbook and feel her with me in the kitchen. I added pics of mom and her recipes and stories, I love it. (I used heritage cookbook to print the books)

When my cousin married, I had one of our grandmother’s handwritten recipes printed on a kitchen towel for her.

This sort of post reminds me, I want to print my blog I started in 2013, which is into 9 sections, each book between 60 & 160 pages! I’m not in love with it staying on the internet, but I do want to capture the memories and photos! I’ve done the first step (downloading), but where to print them is stumping me. Any ideas? (I’m in Australia, which likely impacts things!)

A few words of advice, don’t let too much time pass you by. Every day is a gift and there are no guarantees. We loved my mother in law and her Italian cooking: the amazing aromas, the mouthwatering flavours and the soul satisfying taste. She passed three years ago and even through her brief illness and in knowing we didn’t have much time with her, we were hesitant to ask for her recipes. As if we were admitting we knew she’d be gone soon and that hurt more than we could bear. As my husband was sitting at her hospital bedside he found the courage to ask what the secret to her sugo was. For that brief time, she perked up as if she had a mission and happily recited her recipes for several of her dishes over the next few days as my husband recorded the conversations on his phone. The medications made her forgetful and the long pauses of “I’m thinking” made us smile. She passed shortly after but we have her familiar voice guiding us through our Sunday dinner prep. I’ve since transcribed her words and printed them in a binder for our son. I’ve added my family recipes from my mother and will continue to do so with mine. I’m hoping he will cherish them (whether or not he actually tries his hand in the kitchen some day). Few things in life bring back memories like food.

Feel compelled to comment for the first time after years! I grew up in an American family overseas without access to convenience foods or “shortcut” ingredients. We cooked a lot. As a high school graduation gift to myself before moving to the US alone for college, I photocopied all of the recipes that I wanted to be able to make on my own and organized them in a binder. I still remember lining them up carefully- layering handwritten ones on cookbook pages to make the most of paper space. My eating habits fluctuated over the following years- vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free- but when I wasn’t eating much there were still things I could make that tasted like home, and when I returned to eating in a way that was more in-tune with my body’s needs, there were more recipes were still there for me.

My mother-in-law had a “famous” spice cake in which she used a specific tea cup to measure with. She had a set of the tea cups and gave them to people as they joined the family. Being the newest member to marry in (10 years ago) I got the last cup <3 I am terrified it may break someday. Try making a recipe using “the cup” not “A cup”… not to mention that she now has altimeters and can’t remember the cake at all let alone how to make it…. <3

when my son went off to his first apartment during college I made him a book of all of the recipes that we loved to cook together at home. Every few pages I would tuck a $20 bill in- for when the new cook had an epic fail and needed to order pizza- because we all are new cooks at one point in our lives- It was the best gift he got during those 4 years- and this thanksgiving, he made a lot of the food and it was great! food is a love language- and even though he is a distance away- when we talk cooking, we are together in the kitchen and in my heart.

Six years ago I made kitchen towels with a cherished recipe from each of the important women in my life and gave my mom a set. One of the recipes is my Memaw’s Cornbread Dressing and every year on Thanksgiving my dad searches through the cabinets for the recipe and every year I just hold up the towel that’s usually right next to him lol. Oh and I also frame them with a photo of the woman who passed it down and it’s fun to “cook with my grandmothers.”

Before she got married, my mom spent a few days (weeks?) in the kitchen with her grandma sticking her hand under every pinch and measuring out then transcribing all the family recipes into a notebook. When I was growing up, my mom would pull that notebook out over and over, eventually adding her own mom’s recipes and some of her own. When I got engaged, and knew she wasn’t ready to part with the now fading notebook, I asked to borrow the notebook and spent countless hours transcribing the whole thing into a OneNote digital notebook. I categorized items by dish type and even translated many of the recipes from Spanish to English. I pull up that OneNote on my phone all the time when I’m cooking.

I have to admit I went extremely above and beyond here… but I’m a designer so it was a very “me” move. Last year for Christmas, I finally went through and cataloged my favorite family recipes, with a couple more face quarantine cooking selections, made illustrations or found pictures I had for each one, and designed a 60 page book I had printed for family and close friends. The reactions (and tears!) made it worth all the hard work.

The Christmas I was 8, I gave my grandma a notebook that I decorated with a kitchen towel (!) and a sticker with “Grandma’s recipes” on it. I told her to start writing her recipies in there. I don’t really remember anything about it after that. When she passed away when I was 24, the notebook was saved for me, she had made a note that it was mine (we are a lot of cousins!) Inside were all my favorite recipes of hers, in her beautiful hand-writing. There were some magazine recipes glued to it with notes (“Not so great, not worth it”, or “use half the sugar” and such). The kitchen towel is stained and starts to come off, and it’s my most cherished heirloom.

My sister got tea towels printed with handwritten recipes that each of my grandmothers was famous for in the family. It’s lovely to have the recipe, but even more to have it in their handwriting.

One of the best gifts I’ve ever thought of (if I do say so myself) was for my sisters wedding. I had a box engraved with their wedding logo and reached out to all the family and friends I could think of to send me recipe cards for it. I got so many recipes from all parts of their lives. It was so cool to see all the recipes and save them, many with special notes, for the future.

I’ve preserved all our family’s treasured recipes in a Plum Print recipe book and I love it!

“I think of those index cards as the sort of things I’ll give to my daughters someday, on some happy-teary milestone occasion.” If anyone has sons, please include them in these rituals and milestones. Cooking is such a beautiful, magic and CRITICAL life skill for all humans (it is non-gender specific). It is important that ALL kids are taught these skills. I work at a university and many students don’t know how to cook for themselves. But most importantly, men can also learn (and are very capable of learning) how to express their love for their family through cooking.

When I was a senior in college, I decided I needed to learn how to cook. My grandma had recently had a hip replacement and was stuck in her apartment, which I knew was hard for her because she was always running around doing things in her community. So I started calling her on my way to class/whenever I was walking somewhere to keep her company, and one day I asked her to send me recipes to make so I could practice cooking. My grandma used to own a cafe and was always in the kitchen. Suddenly I was receiving letters and letters full of old, yellow note cards with her recipes on them. They were SO midwestern circa 1950. I had to look up was Crisco was because I had never heard of it before! I decided to do something special for her 90th birthday, so over the course of the semester I made several of her recipes and took pictures of myself making them and the final products. I didn’t change a single ingredient, so I used a LOT of butter (which it turns out makes everything taste good). It was way too much food for me to eat (meatballs, lasagna, numerous hot-dishes and layer bars, brownies, cinnamon roles) so I invited my friends over all the time to eat and they got to experience a little bit of my grandma too. One time I came home from the library after midnight and half of the boy’s lacrosse team was in my kitchen eating her homemade kit-kat bars! I put everything together (recipes and pictures) into a book called Cooking with my Grandma and decorated the cover with pictures of her. My grandma wasn’t a very expressive woman, so when I gave it to her on her birthday she said, “Well that’s nice.” But I knew she loved it because I caught her reading it several times that day and my relatives said it was all she talked about for weeks. We were working on a holiday edition when she died. To this day I think about it, and I’m so glad it was something we got to share with each other. And now I have a recipe book for the next time I’m missing her and want to eat her coffee-cake-pull-apart bread or apple jelly meatballs.

When my daughter was born, I started writing down the recipes we frequently make into a notebook (and indexing them), as well as some special recipes (like her birthday cake each year or the Christmas cookies we make). I plan to give it to her when she sets up her own home. I adore the recipe box with index cards that I inherited from mother, but it’s not easy to sort through and find what you’re looking for!

For Christmas, my mother put together a custom cookbook with all of her original family recipes. Next to Aunt Janet’s recipe, was a photo of Aunt Janet in her kitchen. Next to my grandmother’s amazing gravy recipe was a picture of us all of at that Thanksgiving table a few years back.
My mother printed six copies and gave us each a copy. I will treasure it for always.
She mailed all the recipes to Plum Print and they photographed the recipes and designed the whole book for her. She said it was super easy.

When my grandma died 15 years ago, I inherited her beloved recipe book. It’s lovely collection of recipes that she collected over many years from friends and family and is the source of all our family recipes. It was also, unfortunately, mostly handwritten by her in pencil. I noticed a couple years ago that it was getting increasingly hard to read and I was so nervous about losing this piece of our family history. To preserve it, I scanned all the pages of the book and turned it into a beautiful hardcover cookbook through Blurb. I printed two: one for my mom and one for her sister. They both loved it – my mom read the entire book cover to cover more than once and loved to reminisce about her favorite memories around each recipe – and around the person who had given the recipe to my grandma. I wanted to give it to my mom for her birthday in December, two years ago. It was so much work and I almost put off printing it for another six months to a year. Luckily I didn’t put it off, because my mom unexpectedly passed away a couple months after she received it. I’m so grateful that she had the time with it and that she had the opportunity to reflect on all the good memories that were associated with her mom and growing up. It’s amazing how so many memories are tied to food and the love that went into preparing that food. I’m also grateful that these books are in our family and that my grandma’s memory – and her jello and carrot salad -will continue to live on.

Thank you for this post – we lost my dad on November 29 and it’s been hard on my mom. My dad loved to cook, but towards the end of his life had only one real recipe that he made regularly; Vietnamese ground pork, which the three of us loved. My mom’s birthday is in March and a plate like the one shown would be a beautiful gift for her provided I can find his recipe!

When we got married, someone close to us gifted a homemade wooden recipe box. A number of friends and family had then given us a few recipes to start off our collection. I have continued to fill it with my own favorites. I will forever have not only what they shared, but in their own handwriting.

As an archivist, I would absolutely not recommend digitisation as a way of preserving a physical item. It absolutely might make it easy to access, so that would be a good reason, but if you’re digitising to ensure that it’s preserved long-term you really need to think about potential issues. Where will you store it? Will you back it up in multiple places? Will you copy it across to new hard-drives every couple of years? What if the file format becomes obsolete? What if it just randomly degrades? Preserving digital files is way more complicated than preserving paper!

I have acquired a few new cookbooks in the last year as I have recently got into cooking. While I am still years away from starting my own family, I have begun to annotate my cookbooks to turn them into heirlooms that I hope to pass on. I bought a stamp to punch on the date that I made something and often also write notes next to it on what to change or additions I made. I hope to look back on the recipes and tell stories of when I first made them in quarantine in my 20s.

Neither my husband nor I have “family recipes.” In fact neither of us spent much time in the kitchen growing up (he wasn’t allowed in and I come from a family who celebrated holiday meals at restaurants). But now we both love to cook (and draw) and a few years ago wrote and illustrated our own cookbook as a holiday gift for friends and family. There’s something about feeding people that is so fulfilling. I’m glad I’m getting to appreciate it in my adult life.

When my mother died 5 years ago, I discovered that the things that were most dear to me were things with her handwriting on them. About 15 years ago she hand wrote a recipe book for me. It had space to add my own recipes, so now it’s a mixture of old and new, but it never fails to make me feel so close to her when I hold it in my hands and cook from it.

My husband’s aunt once asked her Grandma, “Can you give me your roast recipe? It’s always perfect!!” Sweet Great-grandma: “Make sure you choose a good roast. Stick your hand in your oven to make sure it’s the right temperature. Pay attention to the smell and pull it out as soon as it’s done.” No need for written recipes when you cultivate skillz for decades! She also cracked wheat for breakfast and went on a multi-mile every morning, up until the day she died at 102 years. Total inspiration.

Jenny, this is such a helpful post! I have been “planning” on making a family cookbook for the last three Christmases, but… it hasn’t happened. I love all the ideas I’ve gotten from the comments. Thank you!

I don’t have any family recipes passed down to me due to unfortunate childhood circ*mstances. But I’ve made it my goal to find a couple of recipes that are special to my husband and boys and preserve them in handwritten copies, even when it’s so much easier to just print out or email. I’ve had to make a lot of my own happy memories, and I hope one day my children cherish the hand-written copies!

When I asked my Mom to teach me how to make my great-grandmother’s fudge recipe, she so kindly gave me a walk through the process and then put together a small photo album showing how everything should look at each step along the way. I cherish those pictures and the handwritten notes on the sides of the album.

My friend hosted a Great Quarentine Bake Off. We all swapped cookies and judged them by taste, appearance, and over-all. I’m not much of a baker so I turned to my Grandma’s Raspberry Jam Thumb Print Cookies. I placed in each category and I felt so connected to her that day.

My mom put together a book of recipes that my family loves to make as well as my grandma’s cherished recipes into a three ring binder. She put pictures of my siblings and I in the kitchen growing up along with pictures of my kids baking. My mom even has pictures of her as a kid in the kitchen in the book. She continues to add pages to it. It’s one of my most cherished gifts.

For Christmas, my mother in law had kitchen towels printed with a recipe in my late father in law’s handwriting. So sweet! We’re using one (er, wrecking one, because it’s white) and I plan to frame the other one and hang it in our next kitchen or pantry.

This is so timely and I’m loving the comments!! My mom has never been a real cook or enjoyed cooking,but lately I have been wanting to document some of her recipes. There are some things she makes that are just HER and will always evoke her love and comfort (cottage cheese stuffed shells! Choc chip cheesecake! Blue cheese bites…funny how childhood regulars seem insignificant at the time and then give us so much later on). Thank you!!

I’ve got to try the cabinet meatball recipe! My mom passed away around 20 years ago and she was a fantastic cook who always did things by taste. She made the best spaghetti sauce ever and even though I’ve gotten written versions of it mine is never the same.

this thread reminds me of a weird but marvelous illustrated cookbook, _A Russian Jew Cooks in Peru_, by Violeta Autumn. I wish I could post images of its pages here. Really worth seeking out. Great haimish Jewish recipes, and of course Peruvian food is one of the marvels of the world, but all the recipes are this kind of jotted-down-while-watching-your-mom-in-the-kitchen style.

A few years ago I collected all my sibling’s favorite recipes – the ones they’ve started making regularly and their childhood favorites. I reached out to my Mom and Dad for their recipes and then spent the year cooking, baking, and photographing them so I could make a cookbook. It was a lot of work, but the gifts were well received and now everyone has a piece of home readily available in their own kitchens wherever they are.

A few years ago, my husband’s grandma passed away a couple of months before Christmas. I wanted to honor her- to show him that I saw and understood his grief. I took a copy of one of her handwritten recipes (Easter bun, which my husband loves), blew it up and had it framed. My husband is a man of few words and generally non-emotional but choked up at the gift. He now proudly displays it in his otherwise austere office.

A few years ago, I took a couple of my grandmother’s recipes that were always family favorites (and that my mom loves to replicate) and I designed two recipe cards using PicMonkey. I then framed them together and gave them to my mom for Mother’s Day. She has them hanging in her kitchen. :-)