Don’t take the chance of losing all your favorite family recipes: Write them down (come on, you know some of them are only in your Grandmom’s head!) and preserve them in a heritage cookbook that you can share among family members and pass on to the next generation.
If you are just beginning the process, click here to read a 10-step plan with everything you need to do to create a family cookbook. Once you’re ready, here are a few specific things you can do to elevate your cookbook from run-of-the-mill recipe guide to an essential family tool and heirloom.
Detail shots make great additions to your cookbook—such as a close-up of hands kneading dough, of vegetables being sautéed on the stove, or in this case, of tomatoes being washed for a family’s annual tradition of jarring the passata di pomodoro. Photograph by Barbara Marcella.
1 - Take professional looking photographs.
Entire books and a world of blog posts have been written about how to take the best food photographs, and diving in can be so overwhelming that many people refrain from researching this at all. For our purposes, I’ll offer up what I consider a few easy-to-execute tips that demonstrably improve your food photos, plus the best (approachable, informative!) resources:
STYLE YOUR PHOTOGRAPHS. Huh?, you may be thinking, especially if you’re not a magazine editor or an Instagram influencer! By “style” I simply mean, create a set-up: Select one or two props to add texture—think a wooden spoon and a simple nubby dish towel, a cooling rack and an old-fashioned kitchen timer, or some herbs freshly snipped from your garden; cut into your dish—if it’s a tray of cookies you are photographing, break (or bite into!) one and let a few stray crumbs scatter around the dish, or if it’s pie, show the whole pie with a single slice plated next to it. Simple is better than busy, and adding a little texture (cheesecloth, an apron) will go a long way in warming up your food photos. My food stylist friends also say to opt for a smaller plate than you might think so food fills it up and looks plentiful.
Food styling resource for beginners: 9 food styling tips from Replica Surfaces
Food styling resource for serious photographers: Plate to Pixel: Digital Food Photography & Styling by Hèléne Dujardin
Food styling inspiration: The Storied RecipePROPERLY LIGHT YOUR FOOD PHOTOS. I can’t really educate you on how to light your photographs in a few sentences, though these basic principles will go far in improving the quality of your food photos: Don’t use your flash. Opt for natural light whenever possible (style your food near a window—northern exposure, if possible, for a softer lighting effect). Light all your photos consistently; side light is a good option for food. Use a cheap white foam board (available at your local craft store) to bounce light into what you are photographing—this will help brighten your images and eliminate some but not all harsh shadows.
Food lighting resource: 6 tips for easy lighting from Foodtography SchoolINCLUDE YOUR FAMILY IN THE PHOTOS. I can’t overstate this one: This is a family cookbook, so show your family! Consider hiring a professional photographer to shoot you all in your element (around the table, in the kitchen), or enlist a friend or extended family member to take pictures. Go for variety—close-ups of hands chopping or mixing, or arms pulling a pan from the oven; full shots of family members working together to prepare the food, then enjoying it around the table. And get in the picture yourself, even if that means using the self-timer function on your camera.
Family food photo inspiration: Scroll Sarah Yeoman’s Savor Cookbook Instagram feed for plenty of shots of family-inspired cooking scenes.
I am almost always the person BEHIND the camera, so for my own family cookbook, I enlisted help and had someone else photograph my son and me baking holiday cookies—and I treasure the images we got! Photograph by Hugo Juarez.
2 - Typeset all recipes.
Yes, I absolutely encourage you to include scans of those grease-stained, love-worn handwritten recipe cards you’ve inherited—not only is this a surefire way to make sure those are never lost, it also adds visual texture and character to your heritage cookbook. But typing out those recipes, too, will serve three main purposes:
Consistency: Having everything typeset the same way looks professional. Also be consistent about using abbreviations (decide, for example, if you will type out the word “teaspoon” or use Tsp. or TSP). One way to tackle this is to refer to your favorite published cookbook and imitate what you see there. If you want to get serious about editorial styles, check out this thorough recipe style guide from publisher Archangel Ink.
Legibility: Be honest, Nanna’s loopy script might be beautiful, but it takes some focus to read it, no? Having easy-to-scan recipes on hand will make it a no-brainer to pull out your cookbook regularly.
Accuracy: That handwritten recipe might not include every detail you need to prepare the dish accordingly. So, don’t merely transcribe the recipes; rather, prepare them and take notes about what is not explicitly stated in the handwritten version. That might include things like measurements (I have “recipes” from my grandmother that list ingredients with not a single indication of how much of each ingredient to include!); cooking time; or even some things that you happen to know that aren’t written, such as the preferred brand of a certain ingredient. Your goal is to make preparing each recipe as foolproof as possible for those who may not have watched you (or your parents or grandparents) make it in the past.
3 - Add a table of contents (and maybe even an index).
If you’re taking the time to preserve all these family recipes in a printed and bound cookbook, you might as well do whatever you can to make it easy to navigate. A table of contents is fairly straightforward, as long as your cookbook organization is clear from the outset—oh, and you set your design software to print page numbers, of course.
Do you have sections for side dishes, main courses, and desserts? Then use those as subheadings on your contents page. Perhaps you broke things up by family member—Dad’s recipes, Grandmom’s, and Great-Grandpop’s? Again, be clear about this structure in your table of contents.
And bonus tip: Don’t create a contents page until the rest of your book is complete—you’ll avoid a ton of unnecessary corrections and you’ll thank me later, I promise!
As you can imagine, I have strong opinions about including stories and family photos in your heritage cookbook. Adding a paragraph or two about some recipes provides context for the next generation. Were certain foods only cooked on holidays? Was the angel food cake what your brother requested every year for his birthday? Have some recipes evolved over time? Be explicit. She stories AND recipes whenever possible.
For now, though, I encourage you to get started. The only way to fail at this endeavor is to never begin. Happy cooking!
Dawn Roode, a personal historian based in northern New Jersey, helps individuals, families, and family-run businesses preserve their legacies in bespoke coffee table books.
