What to do with the recipe notebook of someone who is gone

The drawer nobody wants to reach into

When the person who cooked in a family dies, their recipe notebook becomes two things at once: an object you treasure and an object that hurts to open. The second one usually wins. The notebook goes into a drawer, somebody says that one day we should do something about it, and there it stays for ten years.

There is no rush and there is no correct way. But there are a few things worth knowing, because they are the ones families find out too late.

This guide is written for that moment.

First: keep the object, not only the information

The day will come when you want to copy those recipes out. When it does, do not throw away or take apart the original.

The notebook matters for what it says, but also for how it says it. Handwriting that changes over the years. The stains. The page that falls open by itself because that recipe was made a thousand times. Grocery arithmetic in the margin. A phone number belonging to someone nobody remembers.

Photograph everything before touching anything, and keep the notebook exactly as it is. If the family is large and everyone wants it, the digital copy settles the argument: the original stays with whoever makes the most sense, and everyone has the same thing.

Do not start with the most important recipe

It seems like the natural choice and it almost always goes badly. The recipe that means the most is also the hardest one to read without breaking down.

Start with any other one. A sauce, a rice, something ordinary. The idea is to find the rhythm of the work before you reach the one that carries weight. By the time you get there you will have practice, and it will hurt less.

And if one day you cannot, you cannot. The notebook has been there for years; it can wait another week.

What you will never be able to ask

Here is the hard part to accept: some information left with the person and is not coming back.

There will be half-finished recipes. Ingredients with no amount. A step that makes no sense. A word nobody can decipher. And the obvious question, "how did you know it was ready?", no longer has anyone to answer it.

Three things help:

Ask the others, not the notebook. Siblings, cousins, the neighbor, anyone who stood in that kitchen. Each one remembers a different piece. Somebody will recall that she always added a bay leaf even though it was never written down.

Cook it badly the first time. Seriously. Cooking an incomplete recipe and seeing what comes out is the best way to understand what is missing. Then write it down with what you learned.

Allow yourself to write your own version. If it will never come out the same, let it come out yours. Note underneath: "This is how she made it. This is how it comes out for me." Both are true and both deserve to be written down.

Give it away, do not lock it up

The instinct is to protect the notebook. Store it carefully, keep it from wear, make sure it is not lost. That is exactly the opposite of what helps.

A cookbook held by one person is one move, one fire, or one broken phone away from disappearing forever. A cookbook held by eight people in three cities is never lost again.

Send it to the family even if nobody asked. To the ones who cook and the ones who do not. To the nephews who have no interest right now, because in fifteen years they will, and by then you may not be around to send it.

And if there is someone in the family who lives in another country and no longer speaks the language well, send it anyway. Often that is the only thing from home they still understand completely.

Cook from it again

A cookbook is not rescued in order to be filed away. It is rescued in order to be used.

Pick a date. That person's birthday, or the day the family used to gather, or simply a Sunday. Cook one of their recipes and tell everyone you are making it. Let each person make theirs wherever they are.

You will discover two things. First, that it does not come out the same, and that is fine. Second, that while you cook you remember things you had not remembered in years. Kitchens can do that, and very few other things can.

One recipe a month

If the whole notebook feels impossible, do it this way: one recipe a month. Twelve a year. In three years the cookbook is complete, spread across the family, and above all, cooked.

Nobody is going to do this for you, and in most families nobody does. That is why cookbooks are lost: not from carelessness, but because there always seems to be time.

Start with one. Today.

At Cook Book 4all you can photograph the notebook page and the site lays the recipe out for you to correct, with your notes beside it. And you can share the whole cookbook with your family, free, so it stops existing in only one place.