Made From Scratch

Family recipes that have been passed down throughout the generations are about much more than just food—they’re about who created the recipes and which culture they can be traced to. They hold the stories of our families and what it took to sustain and nourish them on a daily basis, during hardship and over time. In this sense, cooking is as much an act of resilience as it is a resistance to time, to hardship.

Now, in the middle of a pandemic and amidst a racial and cultural reckoning, the current generation is spending a lot of time in the kitchen. And they’re not only cooking and baking, but also reconnecting to their roots and the strength that has guided their families throughout the centuries.

With so much time being spent in the kitchen and with family recipes on our minds, now is an especially good time to preserve your family recipes and the stories that go with them. Here are seven easy steps for finding and recording your family’s “resilience recipes.”

1. WRITE THEM DOWN

Because cooking is a physical act, many recipes are done by memory and go unwritten. This presents an obvious challenge to family historians wanting to preserve memories across the generations.

“So many of our family recipes are stored in the heads of our family members. Write the recipe down so it can be re-created by others,” says Gena Philibert-Ortega, an author, researcher and instructor who specializes in genealogy and social and women’s history. Her book, From the Family Kitchen (Family Tree Books), discusses how to gather and record family recipes.

If you. Philibert-Ortega suggests inviting the person to make the recipe (virtually or—post-pandemic—in person). Even if they’re creating the dish by rote, take careful notes about what they’re doing and when. As they add an ingredient, have them stop so you or they can measure it. Take photos as your relative makes the dish so the process can be accurately recorded.