Creating a Family Cookbook
Food Can Help You Share so Many Great Family Memories
A collection of family recipes can be a great way to get your relatives all involved in a project that looks into your history. Everyone has favorite family recipes.
Looking for a new way to gather and preserve family memories and history? Try putting together a collection of all those special family recipes that everyone has such fond memories of. Or perhaps those recipes that were flops, and that everyone still remembers.
Family gatherings almost always revolve around food, and the smells and tastes of those traditional dishes can be packed with memories. What better way to capture your family history?
Getting the Recipes
As with most forms of genealogy research that involves your still-living family, this can be tedious and frustrating. The first step in creating this cookbook, is to get ahold of all the recipes that everyone remembers. Do a little word-of-mouth advertising, by talking to those family members you are in touch with. Ask everyone to ask everyone else about adding to your project. You can simplify things by supplying blank recipe sheets, but that can make the request seem very "business like" and may intimidate people. These should be recipes that are directly connected with the family history in some way, not something copied off the back of a package last Christmas. Unless of course there were some great stories about that dish. Make sure to keep track of who supplied the recipe, so you can thank them and give them credit.
More than Just Recipes
Though this is a cookbook, what makes it a special family heirloom is the addition of personal memories, stories and photos. As you ask for submissions, ask that your relatives add anything that they remember about a particular dish, or a time when it was served. Photos are also great, even if it's a typical family photo at a dinner table and you can barely make out the dish. The focus is on the family, not the food.
Test Them Out
This step may or may not be feasible, but should be considered anyway. People's memories aren't always the greatest, and recipes may come to you incomplete. Give them a test run to see if they will produce edible food, and whether they are for the dishes you think they are for. Your cousin may not remember "Grandma's Famous Baked Beans" the same way you do, and provide a different recipe than you expected.
Putting it Together
This can be a bit of a challenge if you are not family with document formatting, but software programs today can make this a pretty easy task. A good word processing program (like MSWord) will have templates that you can use to help organize the pages. Make sure to include a table of contents, or an index of some kind. Another tool you might want to look into is Cooks Palate, a program specifically designed to help you format your own personal cookbook. They even offer editing and publishing services.
Publishing
The style and quality of publishing will depend on how you planned on finishing your project, as well as the size of the finished book. If you really only have a dozen or so recipes and stories, you could just print the pages yourself on a good laser printer and have a booklet made up at the local copy shop. Or if you have a sizable collection of material, along with a large number of interested parties who want a copy, you can look into finding a short-run book publisher who specifically deals in private books. There are even publishers who work in the genealogy field, who might understand your project needs better. Professional publishers may or may not offer editing services to help you get your manuscript ready to print.
Sharing Your Work
As you are collecting your recipes, keep a list of everyone who expresses interest in getting a copy of the finished cookbook. Depending on the cost of the final product, you may want to ask for some kind of payment to cover the costs of the printing. I would make that decision before you actually have the book printed up to make sure enough people are willing to pay up. If they are expecting a free booklet, they might back out when they realize that they are going to get a $30 hardcover book instead. If the costs were not huge, these books would make wonderful gifts to your family members, and may grease the wheels a bit next time you come calling in search of a family photo or vital document.
