Heirloom Recipes

[fifi]

I want to share an heirloom recipe for Scotch Raisin Bread that we make every year in tribute to my dad. Here is the intro to the recipe that I am entering into RecipeGullet here.

My Daddy made this recipe every Christmas for as long as I remember. That makes sense because my sister remembers him making it in 1946. She was 7 years old and found it amazing that Daddy was cooking. That was the year I was born in October. He got out of the Navy after WWII in February. (Do the math. I am a Californian by conception.) The original recipe is a clipping from a newspaper taped into the inside cover of Mom’s  Woman’s Home Companion general cookbook that I think she got when they were married in the 30s. As I grew up, I was tasked with cutting out the paper for lining the pans. I have a sneaking suspicion that Daddy made me reinvent the way to do this every year so that my geometrical skills would get a work out. He didn’t keep a pattern and I think that was deliberate. He used brown paper from grocery bags. My sister and I make several batches every holiday season as a tribute to Daddy, we even have his pans, and we give the loaves to family and friends. I still have to cut out the paper. But, we use parchment paper now and I keep a pattern. I think Daddy approves.

This is a really delicious recipe that everyone looks forward to. Do you have similar recipes that have been handed down and that you are willing to share?

[beachcove]

You are so lucky to have that Fifi!

I have no recipes like that to share. I wish I did.

[Mabelline]

fifi, I'm going to have to look around in my "receipt" books to come up with something properly scrumptious. I don't know about you, but as I read more of jackal10's stuff, I realize how many olde English recipes I have word for word,excepting the weights and metrics.

[fifi]

You are so lucky to have that Fifi!

I have no recipes like that to share. I wish I did. 

Well... Make this one and hand it down. You can tell everyone 50 years from now that you got it from this crazy broad over the Internet, that old system that we used to use to communicate.

edit to add: Yes I am lucky to have it. And... The neat thing is, I know it.

[Pan]

My grandmother used to make a stuffed cabbage recipe with a tomato-based sauce and stuffing that included carrots, prunes, raisins, rice, chopped meat (beef), and - her secret ingredient - ginger snaps. I always loved in when she made it. We still have the recipe and my mother and I have made it, but it never seems to taste the same. I think it was special because my grandmother made it. [i still miss her some 17 years after she died.]

[Mabelline]

My gram too had two recipes that we all loved that were great. One was sailboats, basically hollowed out french rolls with a hamburger,green pepper,onion,and green chile stuffing. She put little triangles of foil over the filling while cooking, then stood those up when she served them. Hence sailboat. The other was cheeseboats-rolls again, but you slice off an end, hollow it out (save the breadcrumbs for something else) and make up a sharp cheese,chopped black olives, green onion,pimento stuffing. Put on the ends and bake. Aah... that gram passed in '93 when she was 96, and I still miss her. And like you, I make these and they are missing something.

Edited December 27, 2003 by Mabelline (log)

[Betts]

My grandmother's Christmas pudding was immortalized through e - gullet this year. It's a Scots/Irish Canadian tradition.

Check it out

[KarenS]

I almost cried when my mom gave me her great grandmothers cookbook from the 1850's. I use her gingerbread recipe. It is a fascinating book, with her recipes for all types of bread (and the yeast). There are plenty of boiled "dressings" and plenty of pies. The handwriting and measurements are interesting to read. My grandmother and her mother added to the end of the book. My grandmother was born in Berkeley and raised in SF, so there are plenty of Mexican recipes too!

[sparrowgrass]

I remember my grandma teaching me how to make homemade egg noodles, and I still have the recipe she wrote out. My dad loved chicken noodle soup, and I made it every time he came to visit. (Does anybody else sprinkle nutmeg on their noodle soup? There was always a shaker of nutmeg on the table when grandma made her soup.)

Also have her recipe for wilted lettuce salad she gave my mom, and the date nut bread recipe she baked every Christmas. From the other grandma, I have a recipe for elderblossom wine, and one for a rhubarb custard pie, which I HAVE to have every spring, sure as daffodils.

[Jaymes]

My grandmother met my grandfather, who was considerably older than she, when she was a very young girl working at a Harvey House Restaurant somewhere in the wild, wild west, and he (Jinx) was a conductor on the railroad.

Her recipe for French Toast was the same one served in the dining car.

[Suzanne F]

I have Miss Edna sitting on my bookshelf. Not her ashes , her recipes, given to me by her granddaughter, my friend Mary. Mary is not much interested in cooking, but thought I might want to go through them. Miss Edna used to serve things like the "Tomato Aspic" that Julia Reed (?) wrote about sometime ago in the NY Times Magazine, being a lady from almost-the-South (the Ozarks, I believe). I really need to have a thorough look and report back.

[Naomi]

The funny thing about my old family recipes is that there is rarely any instruction given for methodology. It was assumed that you would know what to do with the ingredients. My granny won many trophies at country shows for her cakes. Sadly she was too senile to teach me to bake when I became interested. But my mum is still instructing me.

My family are ulster-scots and so my recipe collection is big on bread and cakes. Potato bread, soda, wheaten bread, pancakes, scones... these were baked every other day. Boiled cake, seed cake, cherry cake, chocolate and sponge cakes and pies and tarts were weekend fare. I make many of these still, but with the scourge of Atkins that has hit recently, few of my friends will indulge.

[tryska]

y'all are lucky. I have nothing like that, and no hopes of even recovering things like that, as my mother's line all had cooks. I've got no heirloom recipes. :(

[SethG]

May I request that everyone who has an heirloom recipe please post such recipe to the recipe archive and provide a link here in this thread?

I have no such recipes, but I'd like to acquire as many as I can!

[alacarte]

I have no heirloom recipes either. That's one reason I began collecting old cookbooks. You'd be surprised how many "family recipes" are really things that Great-Aunt-So-And-So clipped from the local newspaper cooking pages, added a dash of nutmeg, and made a family tradition. That doesn't mean that we prize them any less, though.

[alacarte]

y'all are lucky. I have nothing like that, and no hopes of even recovering things like that, as my mother's line all had cooks. I've got no heirloom recipes. :(

Your mom, and your grandma, and so on all had cooks??!!??

sounds like you're the lucky one!

[tryska]

well my grandmother, great-grandmother, etc had cooks. then my mom moved to america. and subsequently had to learn how to work the damn stove.