DISCOVERING FAMILY RECIPES

You may have your family food heritage represented in cookbooks but not even realize it. This doesn't have to be a collection of family recipes in one cookbook or notebook. You may discover that family members have contributed to community and organizational cookbooks.

These might date back for several decades, but give you insight into recipes your family members used, places where they lived, and organizations they belonged to. These cookbooks compose a part of your family heritage as much as those containing only recipes from your relatives.

Check Out Family Cookbooks

Look over recipe books accumulated by family members over the years. Generally when someone contributes a recipe or two to a fund raising project, they purchase at least one copy of the cookbook.

Most of these recipe books will be from the community where your family lives or has lived. Occasionally someone will contribute recipes to a project in a distant, yet related, area.

Nowadays, with the Internet, it's easier to send recipes to projects further from home. Also, groups of people around the country and the world may add their recipes to an e-book that raises funds or promotes a cause.

Possible Cookbooks with Family Recipes

* Church cookbooks - Fund raising cookbooks by church organizations are numerous. If your family member or ancestor attended a particular church, check to see if the ladies' group ever produced a cookbook. You may find a familiar name there.

* Organizations - Various organizations find cookbooks a great fund raising project. I've participated in cookbooks created by authors' and quilters' groups. Some historical societies produce cookbooks, especially when contributors pass along old family recipes.

* Schools - Often the PTA will produce a cookbook with recipes from the teachers and parents of the school children.

* Calendars = Sometimes calendars with recipes on them have been used as fundraisers. When my granddaughter was in 7th grade, the students collected recipes placed on a calendar instead of a picture for each month.

* Online Cookbooks - These have become popular in recent years and are produced in the e-book or on a CD.

My recipe from a church recipe book, the 1974 Poughquag Cookbook, produced by the ladies of the Poughquag (NY) Methodist Church .:

APPLE CAKE - Add 1 cup sugar to 2 cups coarsely chopped apples; let stand for 10 minutes. Melt 4 tablespoons butter or margarine and add to apple mixture. Then blend in 1 beaten egg and 1 teaspoon vanilla.

Sift together 1 1/2 cup flour, 1-teaspoon baking soda, 1-teaspoon cinnamon, 1/2-teaspoon salt; add to apple mixture. Stir; then fold in 1/2-cup raisins and 1/2 cup chopped nuts.

Bake in greased 9-inch pan at 350 degrees F. for approximately 30-40 minutes, or until cake tests done.

(c) 2026 Mary Emma Allen, me.allen@juno.com

(Mary Emma Allen researches and writes from her woodland NH home.)