I have an old cookbook from Atkinson, Nebraska, that I have carried with me for years. It was put together many years ago by a woman’s group from one of the local churches. It isn’t fancy. There are no beautifully styled photographs or glossy pages. It is simply a collection of recipes contributed by women in a small town. And I love it.
I have cooked from it for years, but sometimes I find myself flipping through the pages without looking for anything to cook at all. I am looking at the names.
There are family names I recognize. Friends of my grandparents. Women from town whose names I remember hearing when I was growing up. Some I knew, some I knew of, and others simply belonged to that little community that has always meant so much to me. Their names are still there beside their recipes, and I remember them fondly. I think that’s when an old cookbook becomes something more than a cookbook.
There was a time when churches, women’s groups, schools and community organizations regularly put together cookbooks. Everyone contributed something.
Someone offered her chocolate cake. Another shared the casserole she brought to church suppers. Someone else contributed homemade rolls, pickles, Christmas candy or the salad that always appeared at family gatherings. Then all of those recipes were gathered together and made into a book.
I love thinking about that. How sharing a recipe would bring people together.
Long before we could type a few ingredients into our phones and have thousands of recipes appear, women were sharing recipes with one another in a whole different way. They were passing along what worked in their own kitchens. They would share their recipe along with tips and suggestions. And when you look through that cookbook, especially in a small town, you probably knew exactly whose recipe you were making.
You weren’t making ‘just a chocolate cake’. You were making Mrs. So-and-so’s chocolate cake. The name mattered.
Then there are the cookbooks that seemed to live in kitchens everywhere. For many families, one of those was the familiar red-and-white plaid Better Homes and Gardens New Cookbook.
Maybe it sat on a kitchen counter. Maybe it was tucked into a cabinet with pages coming loose and handwritten notes in the margins. Maybe your mother opened it every Thanksgiving or your grandmother used the same recipe from it for decades.
What makes a cookbook like that valuable isn’t necessarily its age. It’s what happened while it was in the kitchen. A pristine old cookbook can be lovely. But give me the one with the flour in the binding and the vanilla stained pages. Give me the book that automatically falls open to the same recipe because it has been used so many times.
Give me the handwritten substitute in the margin, the little check mark beside a favorite recipe, or the place where someone wrote, William likes this. These marks tell you that the book had a life.
Sometimes we keep these old cookbooks just because they belonged to someone special. When I recently shared about handwritten recipes on social media, something caught my attention.
Men commented too. They talked about having cookbooks that belonged to their mothers and grandmothers. And that says something important.
They may never make a single recipe from them. But they remember the women who did. They remember seeing that cookbook opened on the kitchen counter while their mother made dinner. Maybe they remember their grandmother pulling it down from the cabinet before Christmas. Maybe just seeing the cover brings back memories of a kitchen that no longer exists and people they would give anything to sit around a table with one more time.
That is why I don’t think we should be too quick to dismiss old cookbooks as clutter. I think an old cookbook is one of those ordinary objects that somehow holds an extraordinary amount of memory. These community cookbooks hold so many stories, but they can also tell us how people lived before us.
You can flip through the pages and see what families put on their tables. What they baked for Christmas. What they carried to a neighbor. What they served when company came. What could feed a large family inexpensively and what was considered special enough for celebration. They are little records of domestic life. And I think that is why I am so drawn to them.
History isn’t only found in important documents and museums. Sometimes history is written on an index card. Sometimes it is tucked inside a recipe box. And then sometimes it is in a spiral-bound little cookbook put together by the women of a church in a small Nebraska town.
If you have one of these old cookbooks, use it. Make your mother’s potato salad. Try your Grandmother’s Christmas cookies. Open that old community cookbook and choose a recipe from someone whose name you recognize.
And while you are there, write in it. Put a star next to the recipe your family loves. Write the date you made something for Christmas dinner. Make a note that says add more cinnamon or the children love this. My mother has always done this and it is such a treasure. And then suddenly, one day, your handwriting and little notes in the handed down cookbook will become someone else’s treasure.
They won’t just see an old cookbook. They’ll see the cookbook that sat in your kitchen. They’ll remember you standing at the counter with it open. They’ll recognize the notes in the margin. They’ll know which pages you loved because those will be the ones that show the most wear.
Cookbooks can teach us how to make dinner and move through the kitchen, of course. But the very best ones eventually become something more. They remind us of those who cared for their family and friends from the kitchen before us.