5 Tips for Preserving Your Family Recipes for Generations
Passing down your favorite dishes doesn’t have to be difficult.
Mechelle Brooks/Getty
Almost every family has unique recipes, and those can be a powerful reminder of our loved ones. Many of us want to pass down our favorite dishes and the memories of those who created them, but have no idea where to start. If that’s you, don’t worry — it’s not as complicated as it may sound.
Be Gentle With Paper Copies
If you’ve inherited a handwritten recipe from a family member, it’s a good idea to cook with a copy. Spills and stains are likely in the kitchen! Take a photo of the original paper or scan it, then use the digital version or a print of it while you’re cooking. It’s also easy to share the digital copy with your family members and friends.
To preserve the original, former chief of the National Archives Conservation Laboratory Mary Lynn Ritzenthaler suggests storing it in a clear polyester film sleeve, then filing it in an archival folder or box. You should also avoid making additional folds in the paper because those will weaken it.
Take Measurements
A common hurdle in recording family recipes? Lots of experienced home cooks don’t measure anything. If you ask your family’s star chef how much of an ingredient to add, you might get a frustratingly vague answer like “some” or “not too much.”
Roya Shariat wrote a cookbook, Maman and Me: Recipes from Our Iranian American Family, with her mother, Gita Sadeh. She says collaborating with her mother was key to writing down recipes that anyone could follow.
“My mom, like many immigrant chefs, is an intuitive cook!” says Shariat. “I had to work really closely with her, sometimes forcing her to use measuring spoons or setting timers for cooking steps, to get a level of instruction down that would make our recipes easy to adapt at home. I wish ‘season with your heart’ was something we could write down, but it's probably for the best that we have those precise ingredients.”
Photo Courtesy of Roya Shariat
Film The Process
As hard as we try, not everything can be neatly written down. That’s where videos come in. Filming your loved one walking you through a recipe can help clarify measurements, show techniques visually and add context and personality to a recipe that might get lost on paper. You don’t need fancy equipment, either — your phone should be enough.
Keep an Open Mind
Shariat says one recipe in her cookbook, noon masti (sweet yogurt fritters), was totally new to her. Her mother insisted on including the dish even though Shariat had never tried it before. She told Shariat that the recipe came from her own great-grandmother, and when Shariat tried to look the dish up online, she couldn’t find it published elsewhere. She realized then how personal and special it was.
“Once you start talking to family members about their recipes, you have no idea what you'll learn, whose stories you'll hear or what new deliciousness you might uncover,” Shariat says.
Start Now
Whether you take notes by hand or type them, film your recipes or write them down, remember that perfection doesn’t exist. There are endless ways to record your family’s stories, memories and recipes, and you’ll figure out the details as you go.
“Our time with our loved ones is so precious, and being able to capture those recipes down — even if it's just a quick summary or a rough draft — is such an important way to preserve family history and keep traditions and culture alive,” Shariat says. “The important thing is to just try.”
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