Bake some family history memories

Many of us will have strong memories closely tied to special relations and their speciality dishes. So what better way to have fun than cooking up some comfort food, and served with a generous helping of happy memories.

Here are 5 steps to making the most of family history recipes

1. If you’re lucky enough to have hand-me-down recipe books or index cards, take some time now to go through them. Scan them in for your siblings, and share the digitised copies of Granny’s secret pancake batter mix or marvellous marmalade tips as pictures via email or your family messaging groups.

2. Maybe you’d like to scan in and type up all the family favourites you have at home, and ask relations for contributions too. That way you’ll end up with a recipe collection that will appeal to all tastes, sharing and sparking memories across the generations.

3. You could print these out as a book or use a website such as Photobox to create beautiful keepsake copies.

4. Many of the real old favourites are made ‘by eye’ – a skilful dash of this and spoon of that. But why not commend these treasures to paper, to ensure they can be enjoyed long into the future too. If you have recipes you ‘just know how to make’, write them down. If your relations do too, encourage them to put pen to paper, sharing the magic secret of their culinary success.

5. Lastly, we’re family historians right? So, no recipe is a Floating Island Dessert… Why not, alongside the recipes, ask your relations for the memories they have associated with the recipe. Who do they remember baking it? Who loved eating it? What special occasions was it made for? Etc. If you have photos of the family cook in question, include that too.

To find out more about fun and easy ways to record your family stories and memories – and yes, that includes recipes – online during lockdown, see the June issue of Family Tree. Download your issue today.

Photo by James Besser on Unsplash