Family Treasures: Preserving Family Recipes

Family Treasures: Preserving Family Recipes

Food does not only nourish our body but also our memories. Food is essential for physical survival for humans. But we often forget that food intake goes much further than meeting physical needs. Food structures families’ schedules, provides social activity, defines relationships, represents ethnicity, and describes our identities. Food has and will always be part of family celebrations, ceremonies, and rituals because, through food, we are connected with family members of every generation. 

Food has the power to bring back fun, sometimes crazy, family memories that will forever be cherished in our hearts. They evoke magical and wonderful memories just through taste. We find ourselves cooking and baking familiar dishes from time to time to keep these memories and traditions alive. Recipes are easily found online, but they do not bring the same sentiment— or taste—as the cherished recipe from family.

One of the most treasured heirlooms that are passed along within the family is recipes. It can be your grandmother’s homemade quick breakfast that always reminds you of the Sundays spent with her. Or perhaps your mother’s pumpkin pie she learned from a great grandmother brings a sense of nostalgia to the yearly family Thanksgiving dinner. While these recipes are a thread of your family’s large fabric of legacy, preserving every nuance is challenging. So, how can you make sure that these long-running family recipes get passed down to the next generation to cherish for years to come? 

Digitize Family Recipes

Handwritten recipes tend to be very personal and often display evidence of years of use. However, papers and cards can become folded, torn, and crumpled over time. Sometimes, they come with spills and stains from being exposed in the kitchen. While looking through the papers gives the recipes an emotional connection, character, and more meaning, but this doesn’t bode well for the long-term preservation of recipes. An easy way to preserve those family recipes is to store them digitally. To digitize family recipes, you can type out the original recipe or scan it and store it on your laptop or smartphone. 

Turn Them into a Cookbook

There are at least ten handwritten recipes passed down from generation to generation. And it’s challenging to keep all of them in one place; some recipes may be misplaced ending up lost forever. Another creative option for preserving family recipes is to turn them into a cookbook. Like the Cookbook by Eleanor Gaccetta, Generations of Good Food, you can have a book that tells a part of your ancestor’s story and honoring their life and legacy. Collecting family recipes and making them into a cookbook turns them into treasured possessions. Cookbooks are extra special gifts that add a little family history to the mix and celebrating the people and places behind the recipes you love. In many of the dishes in Gaccetta’s cookbook, she includes an annotation describing where the dish is originated, and the special meaning of this family recipe for a personal touch. That way, the recipe becomes more than just instructions on how to make it. It becomes a family memoir or food journal. 

Make a Recipe Keepsake

Family recipes frequently get a lot of wear and tear. It is time to keep these heirloom recipes in enclosures that ensures that the next generations can come and pick them up to cook up feasts for their own families. Written recipes hold a lot of significance and if you want to avoid digitizing them, making a recipe keepsake is another option. Several methods include framing recipes or a memory box and turning them into kitchen decorations for a vintage feeling at a glance. This is a craft that both preserves the recipe and pays homage to the person you love.

Celebrate Family Recipes and Traditions

Now all that’s left to do is savor your family’s history. What good is a recipe if it’s just sitting in a cabinet corner? Preserving it should have a purpose. Celebrate by hosting a family dinner party or preparing this cherished recipe for a family event. Cooking and baking reconnect everyone to their roots and the strength that has guided the family throughout the centuries. If there’s a particular tradition you remember from childhood, share these with children, grandchildren, nieces, nephews, and other relatives. Recipes and traditions are as much part of family history as the names, dates, places, origin, and other facts that trace back to ancestry. These treasures bring many wonderful memories, new and old, that can become a meaningful legacy to pass to future generations. So share, celebrate, and eat!