How to Write a Family Recipe Book
/
How to Write a Family Recipe Book
Cooking is such an important part of our lives—it not only has the power to keep us healthy and, well, alive, but it can create long-lasting memories that bring a smile to our face and joy to our hearts. And every family has certain family recipes that people love to enjoy for years on end; but what happens when family cooking is lost forever?
Most people only think about the importance of cooking in their family history when it is too late to do anything about it. When grandma passes away and her secret brownie recipe is gone, it can leave a hole in our hearts as we think about family memories of her love-filled treats that will never be shared with future generations.
However, you don’t have to worry about losing memorable and significant family cooking recipes if you write a family recipe book. The following guide will help you preserve your family history and family memories by creating a cookbook that can be preserved for people in the family now—and in the future.
How to Write a Family Recipe Book
Writing a family recipe book is not difficult in terms of the actual writing process, but it does require a lot of patience and dedication to get the recipes that will later be bound together in a book. The following are the basic steps you should follow in order to write a family recipe book of your own.
Write down the recipes you want to have recorded
The first thing you need to do is write down all the recipes you want to have recorded. Grandma’s cookies? Uncle Jerry’s special chicken wings? This can be a collaborative project with the family. To make things easier, start a group chat or pick one person to be the designated “recipe list keeper” and direct the family to message with the recipes they want in the book.
Find the people who know the recipe and have them walk you through the process
For each recipe, you will need to know the ingredients and the exact steps they take during cooking. You may want to see if they will actually cook the recipe for you. If you can, record them cooking and explaining the recipe, as this will make it easier to get all the information down later.
If there are a lot of recipes to go through, have a few family memories work with you. In this case, a recording is the best option so you can create standardized recipe pages later on.
Convert recipes into pages for a book
Finally, take the recipes you have written down or recorded and convert them into recipe pages. Recipe pages should be broken down into ingredients, supplies, and then the recipe instructions. If you plan to send the book to multiple family members, you can make the binding process easier by using a print on demand service to make copies automatically.
Creating a family cooking recipe book is hard work, but the preservation of this element of family history is worth it.
The other option you have is to call us! We could film your own cooking show for you and your family (and future generations) to enjoy!
To learn how to write a poem about your family history click here.
To make art out of Granny’s words of wisdom click here
Check out our 10 questions to ask your parents before it's too late!