I think that splotch was Tabasco

May 6, 2015 7:12 AM

" “I tell my daughters that when I go, they’ll know the good recipes from the dirty pages.” [NYT]] A group of Nashville writers mounts an exhibit of the dirty pages from their own family cookbooks.
posted by Miko (20 comments total)

This is true. Also the pages fall open there.
posted by Segundus at 8:02 AM on May 6, 2015 [2 favorites]

YES. This is so utterly right on -- whenever I buy a used cookbook, my first step is always to investigate whichever pages the spine instantly cracks open to reveal, because you know that's gonna be where the good stuff is. Always keep an eye out for used cookbooks at rummage sales, too.

Since I don't have a way to scan my own dirty cookbook pages oil-spattered 3x5" index cards, I thought I'd manually share a couple of my favorites -- the ones I'd make sure to pass down if I had any kin: shorbat adas (recipe card sez: 8 cups water + 3 Maggi cubes 6 cups vegetable broth + 1 tsp sumac), best bread machine bread evar (recipe card sez: 1.25 tsp yeast, use honey instead of white sugar, or use maple syrup instead of honey for a darker, crispier crust), double batch chickpea cutlets (recipe card sez: perfect just the way it is).

Happy cooking, y'all.
posted by divined by radio at 8:03 AM on May 6, 2015 [12 favorites]

Ironically, that dirty page link is clean of all content in Firefox.

I get a pristine white page, free of any blemish.
posted by sutt at 8:08 AM on May 6, 2015

I love love love this.

I decided recently to start keeping an old-fashioned recipe box, for basically this reason - there's something so sterile and impersonal about, say, maintaining a Pinboard or bookmark folder of recipes. I want to be able to write on the cards, make annotations. I WANT the cards to get dirty.
posted by showbiz_liz at 8:08 AM on May 6, 2015 [5 favorites]

" “I tell my daughters that when I go, they’ll know the good recipes from the dirty pages.”

Mostly true. The dirty pages are also the recipes that are easiest/quickest to throw together in a pinch, with "good" being a secondary concern.
posted by Thorzdad at 8:30 AM on May 6, 2015

I have and love this cookbook and always find my favorites by where I've spilled dry ingredients and widened the spine upon closing on them. It's like the book 'knows' me: 'Oh, looking in the soup section? Try this one - you liked it last time.' In addition, one of the few remaining reasons I keep a printer around the house is to print out recipes from the web. I love digital books and readers, but my kitchen is a strictly analog space.
posted by eclectist at 8:32 AM on May 6, 2015 [1 favorite]

My best recipes have notes written all over them as well as being smudged. I write as I'm cooking and afterwards if there were changes I made that worked/didn't work well.

Printing the best bread machine recipe now but seriously questioning the amount of oil? Okay if you say it's the best I'll try it. Always need another bread machine recipe.
posted by RichardHenryYarbo at 8:35 AM on May 6, 2015 [1 favorite]

Printing the best bread machine recipe now but seriously questioning the amount of oil? Okay if you say it's the best I'll try it. Always need another bread machine recipe.

Yep, 1/4 cup is the right amount! I messed up my note above, though -- it should be 2.25 tsp of yeast, not 1.25. And if you're not trying to keep it low-sodium, throw another 0.5 tsp of salt in there, it will help the loaf rise better. Also, 1 cup of the very best "bread flour" is actually 1 Tbsp vital wheat gluten with the rest of the cup filled with regular old all-purpose flour. I'm a terrible baker but this one recipe has always worked out perfectly for me. Hope you love it, too!
posted by divined by radio at 9:06 AM on May 6, 2015

I'm feeling nostalgic just for typed recipes.
(I wonder if there's a font that replicates clogged type hammers)
Many of my mother's recipes were on 3x5 cards, but possibly the the best ones are typed.
Mmm. Wind Pudding.
posted by MtDewd at 9:31 AM on May 6, 2015

Was I the only person who was expecting something more like "explicit content" as opposed to pages that are literally dirty?
posted by MysticMCJ at 9:47 AM on May 6, 2015

Ironically, that dirty page link is clean of all content in Firefox.

(Pop-up blocker was hiding all the images for me in Chrome. Try disabling?)
posted by nobody at 10:11 AM on May 6, 2015

I decided recently to start keeping an old-fashioned recipe box

I have a spiral-bound blank book I've been using for maybe 10 years. I make recipes off the internet and all, but if I really like something, I hand-write it in there, with any notes. I really like doing this. Now it's like a history of Recipes I Have Loved, and only gets better with time.
posted by Miko at 10:21 AM on May 6, 2015 [2 favorites]

I just realized that some of my favorite recipes are things I printed out online and now only exist as the physical copy, like the bagel recipe I adapted from somewhere else in college and then sent to someone over email from a VAX terminal and then ended up printing out the email to have a copy of myself.

Dot matrix recipes with crusted dough on them is pretty much my kitchen legacy and I'm super okay with that.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 10:37 AM on May 6, 2015 [2 favorites]

(Pop-up blocker was hiding all the images for me in Chrome. Try disabling?)

Thanks!

And wow, I saw those social media links and didn't think "smudge on a recipe page", I was reminded of this. Sorta the opposite of appetizing.
posted by sutt at 11:42 AM on May 6, 2015

if I really like something, I hand-write it in there, with any notes.

Me too. Though Rose Levy Berenbaum's rye bread recipe, which I had written in fine marker, got wiped out when the kids were spraying water bottles at each other. Ah, well...

I've been debating whether to continue to write down recipes by hand or to put them in a digital format. I ask myself whether there's anything special about my hand, whether it will matter, down the line, to my kids or grandkids that they're holding something that I scribbled down. There's no magical power there -- is there? At some point, doesn't it become just another piece of paper, written by a family member the current recipe-holder never knew? Aren't the memories of cooking together more important?

I think of the Mennonite Community Cookbook, now in its nth printing, and see "Mrs. John Marin, Hutchinson, Kan." and her recipe and I feel OK being forgotten in favor of my bagels... and at the same time, feel sad that I have only the recipes that my grandmothers clipped out of newspapers, and nothing that they were more intimately connected to. No magic there.

My copy of "The Bread Baker's Apprentice" is beaten and blotchy and has my comments all over it; likewise the books on canning. I have cookbooks from library sales, with notes from women I'll never know, books that were abandoned, donated, let go into the world, with all of their stains. I see the "Dirty Pages" project and I fall in love again with the idea of rescuing and valuing what has been treasured and forgotten, and maybe that's the magic of it. Thanks, Miko. Good stuff.
posted by MonkeyToes at 12:30 PM on May 6, 2015 [2 favorites]

Plenty of our cookbooks have notes and stains and favorite pages. The Ben & Jerry's ice cream book actually has fallen apart in several places so the cover acts as a sort of wrapper. All hail Sweet Cream Base #2!

More often, though, 3-ring binders and page protectors let us keep our recipes legible except for the notes we add (about changes, scaling up/down, kids' reactions, etc.). Also, I can take out just one recipe and prop it up or tape it to the cupboard door, but put the whole binder out of the way.

And printing out recipes from a web site (instead of using a tablet in the kitchen) prevents Recipe Amnesia when web sites break their links or simply disappear without warning.
posted by wenestvedt at 12:51 PM on May 6, 2015

There's no magical power there -- is there?

Speaking as a museum person: there is magical power in the way people perceive the work of the hand - writing especially - and it's getting stronger, not weaker, as time goes by. A printout could have been made by anyone and would look the same. Handwritten notes speak of individuality - something that could only have been made by you, in a given moment.
posted by Miko at 8:02 PM on May 6, 2015 [2 favorites]

Crazy, the first picture is the muffin page from the Betty Crocker cookbook. It was a huge flashback to my childhood helping my mom make muffins (and later making my own) while reading the recipe from the same page.
posted by karlshea at 10:03 PM on May 6, 2015 [1 favorite]

TIL: Writers like cake
posted by asok at 4:30 AM on May 7, 2015

I thought this was fun, so I made the banana pudding recipe yesterday, but with 3 mangoes since I didn't have any bananas on hand. The consensus in my house was it was delicious, I'll definitely make it again. I think it's still plenty sweet doubled, but maybe I'm just getting old and losing my sweet tooth. I'll cut down a little on the vanilla though, I'd like to taste the fruit a little more.
posted by TungstenChef at 10:16 AM on May 7, 2015