There is a genetic flaw in the maternal lineage of my family. We have an illness--we are recipe collectors. When my grandmother died, my mother brought home 2 boxes of cookbooks. When my mother died, I brought home 4 boxes of cookbooks, of which many were duplicates from my grandmother's collection, and some were duplicates of my personal stash.
You see, The Hale/Brooks/Windle/Voth/Lusk women in my family are cookers. We talk about recipes, we send them to each other in letters. My grandmother's recipes always had a commentary on the worthiness of each recipe she passed on. I have her wooden recipe file box that is inscribed with her name and the date: May, 1939.
I'll never forget the time my Mother called me to say she had found the BEST pecan pie recipe in the Cooke County Home Extension Agent's weekly column in the newspaper. I said, please send it to me! As I assembled the ingredients, melted the butter, and cracked eggs, something was very familiar about this fantastic recipe. As I read the back label of the Karo syrup bottle, I realized that Tulu Hickerson (yes, that was the Home extension Agent's name) had, (God forbid!) plagiarized the Karo syrup recipe! I finished making the pecan pie, called my Mother and reported my findings to her. This was the same recipe that every one of us had used since God made Karo Syrup!
I will NOT throw a recipe away. I have boxes of recipes, copied from coworkers on a prescription pad, napkin, Big Chief tablet paper. Over the past years since 1975, I have collected masses of recipes. I remember the very first one I tore from a magazine...it was a step-by-step from Better Homes & Gardens for cabbage rolls. Have I ever used that one---what do you think? But right at this moment, I can lay my hands on it!
There are clipped recipes that I have made with outstanding success, only to panic when I couldn't find that particular recipe amid the thousands thrown into a large Dillard's box. Two in particular...turkey tetrazzini and a Creole Shrimp Remoulade both from old Saveur magazines will turn up someday. Maybe they are tucked into a cookbook. (Since the Shrimp Remoulade loss, I have found several others that I have "tweaked" to obtain culinary success.) Ask my kids.
The women before me bought every community cookbook sold in local churches & organizations. Poring through these is an adventure in time travel. One of my Grandmother's cookbooks contained a recipe for a casserole made from hamburger. The specified "ground chuck" was to be browned in a heavy skillet to which was added 2 tablespoons of Crisco or similar shortening. Of course the recipe never mentioned draining the fat off before using the beef.
Even my Great Grandmother' s handwritten memories contained an anecdote of a baking disaster. Lula Mae (b. 1880) made her first cake for her new husband without a recipe. How hard could it be? But, something was not right...the cake batter didn't resemble her mother's. As she caught a glance of Elmer walking up to the house, she removed a loose floorboard, and poured the miserable batter below, only to have him stride into the kitchen as she rose from dumping the batter. As Lulu told it, she didn't live that one down for a long time.
There is one of Lulu's recipes still being used and enjoyed. She had a recipe for a "Cherry Pudding" published in a Sanger PTA cookbook in the forties. I have made this cobbler recipes many times and Zack made it in Boy Scouts for the annual "Troop 68 Dutch Oven Cherry Cobbler Contest" four years in a row...AND won first place each year!
I have begun a process of putting certain recipes in plastic sleeves and placing them in a binder. I wish I could say these recipes are organized in some way, but they're not. They are in the original format from which I obtained them. There are spills, cross-outs, illegible handwriting, fading, misspelled words----but that only gives them character.
Ruth and Brooke enjoy cooking. Ruth is expeditious about her recipes. She keeps the successful ones and researches on the internet. She is known for her killer deviled eggs! Brooke 's key word to cooking is "concoctions." She goes where others have never dared. She has a cooking blog with sporadic but very spirited entries. (See "Cracker Pizza")
What will happen to the four generations of recipes collected so far when I'm gone? I do hope they keep a few----my Sister's Italian Chicken, Betty's Chocolate Cake, Funeral Poundcake, Sherry-spiked cream sauce with porcini mushrooms and garlic, and Lula Mae Brooks' Cherry Pudding!
3 comments:
i could totally go for some of that cherry pudding.
Don't forget your only begotten son who dabbles in cooking also, I have made my own dressing from scratch with no recipe, amongst other things
I laughed OUT LOUD at zack's comment. only begotten son? really, zack?!
and, if you are such a chef, we will GLADLY let you assist in the preparation of the next family dinner celebration--
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