Grandmother’s Recipe Box Reveals Family Culture

STORYTELLING | by SHERRY STRIPLING

THE DRAMATIC SCENE ON THE BACK OF A RECIPE I found in my grandmother’s recipe box was straight of out Mad Men:

The anguished headline asked, “Why did I brag to Jim about my delicious cookies?”, before the ad warned of the hazards of using just any old baking soda. “NO WONDER Dot felt foolish!”

© SHERRY STRIPLING

I have yet to actually cook anything from my grandmother’s recipe cards, but boy have I enjoyed stumbling across family memories, frozen moments of 20^th-century culture plus dozens of suggestions on what to do with lard.

I’ve found recipes from the days when preheating the oven meant putting in the kindling. There are articles on how much corn or sorghum syrup to use as alternatives to rationed sugar in World War II. Advertisement exhortations on the back of recipes for tobacco and hosiery: “Why does Pall Mall taste so good, good, good?” “Great legs deserve Hanes, others need them.”

I saw my great-grandmother’s flourishing penmanship for the first time. My grandmother’s card with the recipe for “Mama’s filled cookies” meant her mother. I remember my “mama” making them, too.

The names of my grandparents’ friends and neighbors are tacked onto favorites: “Mrs. Reep’s Norwegian fruit cake”; “Ida Sorg’s sour cream cake”; “Elizabeth’s Aunt Nora’s raspberry jam, 1943.”

In the 1940s, almost everything called for 1 cup white sugar, 1 cup brown sugar, 1 cup lard. By the 1960s, recipes make your teeth hurt, calling for marshmallows, whipping cream and macaroon crumbs.

“Heavenly Hash.” “Goody Goo.” “Astronaut fruit cake.” “Vinegar Pie” (yum!)

The recipe box is a great glimpse at our family home life with so far only one disappointment:  An envelope said to contain a U.S. Savings Bond for $1,000 from 1962 ― what would that be worth today? ― was just another recipe.