Jump-starting a recipe collection
Consider a recipe box gift for upcoming graduations and weddings, or any gifting occasion at all
One of the things I love most about leading recipe-box workshops—or really any conversation on the topic—is that I never know what’s going to come up, what memories will be sparked, what personal perspectives people will bring to the discussion. There will never be anything mundane or routine about discussions of cherished recipes and the traditions and experiences they represent.
As an example, I was enchanted by something a woman brought up at the workshop I led in January. She said she’d recently been at a wedding shower for which everyone was asked to bring a handwritten recipe card to include in the box with their gift. Apparently, the host was emphatic: it must be hand-written on a card, no print-outs! I wondered aloud if it was a later-in-life marriage perhaps, someone with a closer affinity to the era of recipe boxes? No, she assured me, it was a younger couple.
I never would have guessed recipe boxes being among things gifted to young couples today. Warmed my heart to no end.
Back home a couple of weeks later, I was catching up with a high school friend I hadn’t talked with in years. We’d interacted online now and then, particularly around recipe-related things I’d been posting. It was clear that hers is a family with some rich recipe traditions (as she said on the call, “we’re cooking people, not going-out people.”) and I loved the opportunity to talk more with her about those traditions.
In the course of our chat she showed me her recipe box that dates back to 1989, stuffed with recipes, its lid lost, a bit worn around the edges. Some cards in her collection have been taped to remedy wear-and-tear, some recipe details needing to be rewritten over splotches of sauce or whatever had landed on them. All in all it’s been doing its job as a long-time gathering place for recipes and memories from across the years—as every good recipe box does.
That box, it so happens, was a shower gift as well. One of her wedding showers was hosted by a family friend who gathered recipe cards from a dozen or so others to help jump-start the collection. Diane may have other places where she keeps more recent, more frequently used recipes these days. But that box is still close at hand, it’s where she knows the lemon squares recipe is, and that old lasagne recipe. And she remembers, and thinks about, the women who contributed to it first. What a beautiful gift that still holds so much meaning years later.
Years ago when the daughter of good friends graduated from high school, I bought one of those fancy blank notebooks and included some recipes as a starting point for her new launch into the world. As you’ll see in these photos below, some were casually presented, describing a simple process rather than a full recipe—trying to convey the ease of off-the-cuff cooking. Others I wrote out on recipe cards to tuck into pockets (which I think I added to the book, that part I don’t recall). I also dropped a bit of advice based on my own experience cooking while at college—avoid mint toothpicks to secure the chicken cordon bleu, a recipe I originally got from Seventeen magazine.
I hadn’t asked her about that notebook since giving it to her, unsure if she used it much or found much value in it over time. What joy to hear that it’s one of her favorite gifts, “I’ve added notes and my own family recipes (mainly my mom’s!) to it over the years.”
And it certainly doesn’t need to be a grand occasion such as graduation or wedding to merit such a gift. Thinking ahead, I bought this pretty blank book a few years ago for my grand-niece (currently 5 years old), planning to seed it with recipes as a start to her own collection. I’ll be taking notes as I learn what her favorite foods are through her childhood, to which I’ll add some other young-cook options. It’s something I might give her in ten years or so.
Sure, it may be that some of these folks you’d be gifting a new recipe box, notebook, or folder to already have a recipe collection of some kind underway. But I wouldn’t let that dissuade you from adding something new to the mix. It has come up many times in conversation that the recipes a person has in their collection are actually found in two, three, maybe more different boxes/folder/drawers/etc. I, for one, have my mom’s accordion folder, my started-in-high-school accordion folder that I haven’t added to in years, a notebook in the kitchen (more notes than full-on recipes, but a record of sorts), and folders in one of my office file drawers. With the recipe-box recipient in mind, you could tailor your gift to a particular style of food you know they love, or reflecting on a common interest or memories you share, or some other focus that will make this a distinctive addition to their collection. While also being one they can add to themself over the years.
“Seeding” recipes—how perfectly appropriate!