I recently completed my first class in a gastronomy studies program, the subject of which was the critical analysis of historical cookbooks.
Throughout the class, we’d deconstruct cookbooks to see what things like the ingredients, spill patterns, cultural references, structure and layout, and much more could tell us about the people who made them and the time they were published.
One of the cookbooks I ended up getting to deconstruct as part of the class was my great-grandmother Irene’s recipe manuscript (which I had thought was only my grandmother Clara’s originally — Clara was Irene’s daughter-in-law).
Deconstructing Irene’s manuscript was fascinating, so when a future assignment had us pick a historical recipe to recreate I immediately jumped at the chance to make one of Irene’s. Of course, being me, I went overboard and made three of Irene’s recipes because I couldn’t decide on just one.
While it was a bit stressful making three recipes, I’m so glad I did because it taught me so much not just about myself and Irene but also even my mother, my aunts, and even my grandmother Clara!
And that was only three recipes out of dozens in just one of the several family cookbooks I have in my possession. What more can I learn about my family, about the eras my ancestors lived, and about food in general?
It was this question that led me to decide to shamelessly rip off an idea from the movie Julie & Julia. For those of you who have never seen the movie, the premise centers around a woman named Julia who decides to make every single recipe in Julia Childs’ cookbook.
Thus the inspiration behind Irene to Adam (or at least until I can come up with a name that doesn’t suck lol!). My plan is to go through and make every recipe out of Irene’s cookbook as authentically as possible within reason (and then moving on to the others in my collection) and using my research to create a family cookbook for my aunts and their children.
As you can imagine, many of the recipes are missing significant parts/steps, ingredients might not be available anymore or have changed, and technological advancements have changed things considerably so each recipe is going to take as much time researching it as it will take making it if not more! And this blog series will hopefully capture the interesting highlights and amusing anecdotes along the way.
I hope you enjoy reading about my culinary adventures as much as I hopefully will have making my family’s historical recipes!
To view the next part in my culinary family history adventures, see my Researching my Culinary Family Tree post!
This could be very interesting! I look forward to hearing how the old recipes turn out.