Recipe Preservation

I was talking to a friend of mine who recently lost his mom. Now in his defense he doesn’t cook, not a lick, but it ripped my heart out when he said that he didn’t save any of her cookbooks or recipes. He could only remember her cooking from memory, which tells me that any recipes she had written down were more than likely from his grandmother’s generation or even further back.

There are a few things that I truly hate. I hate wasting money, I hate wasting time, I hate wasting food, and I think the thing I hate most is wasting history. Did you know that you only have to skip one generation to lose the techniques required for a recipe? Skip three generations all of the knowledge to recreate a recipe are almost completely lost.  

A while back I came across a show produced by the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) named “Fannie’s Last Supper” where they recreated a twelve course menu found in Fannie Farmer’s cookbook. To accomplish this it took them close to a year to recreate all the elements because a number of techniques that everyone knew in 1896 had long since been forgotten. I’m sure if you could find a student’s copy of the ‘Boston Cooking School Cookbook’ (where Miss Fannie taught) you would find the notes written in the margins a wealth of information.

Something else interesting is what has been done to this historical document. I have a ‘revised’ edition that has many of the original recipes but were missing some of the recipes used in the show. Now I don’t often make my own gelatin from calf’s feet, but for my clients it’s important that they know how far we’ve come and what their ancestors went through. 

I guess what I’m saying is please don’t waste your history. If you are looking to consolidate recipes into a single cookbook either for just yourself or to share with your family members, drop us a note. The same goes for old recipes and cookbooks that you no longer have a need for, if I can’t use them I can find them a good home for public consumption (pun intended).