Reviewed by Jeanne
Every family has its own special dishes. Some appear mainly at festive get-togethers
like Fourth of July where Aunt Mary’s potato salad is in high demand along with
Uncle Joe’s legendary BBQ and Cousin Tammy’s red velvet cake. Other recipes may be favorite family dinner
fare, like chicken and dumplings or green bean casserole. Whatever the recipes, there are always little
touches that make them unique to a family, and become dishes around which
memories are made.
Valerie Frey begins her book by telling the story of her
mother’s introduction to her new husband’s family favorite mulligan stew—made
with squirrel, complete with skeleton and skull. While the dish didn’t really catch on with
Frey and her siblings, it became a cherished family story. And yes, eventually she did ask her uncle for
the recipe, only to find he had never written it down. When at last she got a copy of the recipe, it
had been done from memory and best guesses.
(Thankfully, the uncle had substituted chicken for squirrel in the
recipe he sent!)
This is a wonderful guide to preserving family memories
through food. Frey offers a lot of inspiration, encouragement, and tips. It’s easy to get overwhelmed with projects
like this, and she has suggestions to keep it going, such as making it a group
project. She also points out the value
of tying family stories and memories to recipes. She also advocates modifying
recipes to suit modern tastes when necessary.
The book has a wealth of other information, including a
section on older food measures (a lump of butter is equal to a rounded
tablespoon, a noggin is a half cup), older kitchen gadgets, how to decipher
handwriting, figuring out who a recipe might belong to, how to organize the
recipes you collect, questions to ask the cooks in the family, and so much
more. I found it entertaining as well,
since Frey recounts many cooking stories as examples of some of the types of
information you may want to include. Frey even goes over formats for printing
your recipe and story collection, including scrapbooking and print on demand.
She also suggests having a working copy of the recipes that are used and an
archival copy to keep for future generations.
Even though I don’t cook and have no ambitions to make a
family cookbook, I still enjoyed browsing Preserving Family Recipes. It reminded me of some of my own family’s
food related stories and brought back a lot of memories. And who knows—I really
like the idea, so I might put together a keepsake type book with just a few
recipes tied to memories. They would
make fabulous Christmas gifts for family. So thank you, Ms. Frey, for some super ideas!
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