How to Make a Family Cookbook

Collect the recipes

Send a short, friendly request to the whole family with a specific date. Do not ask for “some recipes.” Ask for “the one dish you want everyone to remember you for.”

Some people will never write a recipe down. For them, cook with them or call and ask them to talk you through it while you take notes. Ask how much is “a handful,” how long “until it looks right” takes, and what temperature the oven should actually be. Those details are the recipe.

Chase the handwritten cards first. Ask relatives to photograph them front and back. If a card is stained or faded, take the picture in daylight, near a window, with the phone straight above the card and no shadow from your hand.

Keep the originals

Do not throw out the cards after you retype them. The handwriting is part of what makes the cookbook worth keeping. In the finished book, a photo of the original card next to the typed version is the most loved page.

Scan or photograph every original at high resolution as soon as it arrives. Save each image with the person's name and the dish in the file name (“Aunt-Lena_noodle-kugel_card.jpg”). Backing up that folder in a second place takes five minutes and protects the whole project.

Standardize the recipes

Family recipes are written for people who already know how to cook them. “A little flour, bake until done” is a wonderful instruction and a useless one for a cousin who has never made it. Test and tidy each recipe so someone new can follow it.

Make the dish, or ask someone who knows it to make it with you. Weigh or measure the ingredients as they go in, because “a coffee cup of flour” differs from kitchen to kitchen. Mark the quantities you tested so you can say they work. Keep the family's quirky wording where you can, so the voice does not vanish: “Bake until Grandma says it's done” can stay as a note.

Pick one style for fractions and abbreviations and use it throughout: 1/2 cup, tbsp, tsp. Choose either cups or grams for baking and stay with it, or give both.

Add the stories and photos

The recipes are the reason the book is useful. The stories are the reason it is loved. Ask each contributor three questions: Who taught you this? When did you eat it growing up? What would you want a child to know about it? One short paragraph is enough.

Record the story if you can. A voice memo of a grandmother explaining why the cookies are always shaped like crescents is worth more than any typed caption. You can transcribe it for the print edition and keep the audio for the family archive.

Add photographs of the people cooking, the old kitchen, or the table at the holiday. A few good photos do more than a hundred decorative borders.

Organize it so people can use it

Pick a structure that fits your family. There are two that work well.

• By course: starters, mains, sides, desserts, breads. Best for a book people will cook from.
• By person: a section for each grandmother, aunt, or cook. Best for a keepsake that tells the family's story.

Add a table of contents with page numbers, and an index of recipes by person or by main ingredient if there are more than 40. Put a short dedication at the front and a page of family names and relationships so the next generation knows who “Nonna Pia” was.

Make it with an app

A shared document or a spreadsheet works for a small book. If you want the original cards, the typed versions, and the stories side by side, a recipe app saves a lot of copying.

Recipe Tin keeps the photo of each handwritten card with a typed, scalable version, so you can double a recipe and get ½ cups rather than 0.5. You can record a voice note with the story beside it, browse everything by the person who gave it to you, and turn the whole collection (or just one person's recipes) into a typeset PDF cookbook.

Print it

You have three print options: print the PDF at home and bind it, use a copy shop for spiral or comb binding, or order a printed book from an online print service. For a keepsake meant to survive kitchen use, choose a lay-flat spiral or a wire-bound book, and thicker paper for the pages. Consider a laminated cover or a wipeable finish.