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When Family Recipes Go to Someone Else: What Do You Do? · Family Tree Food Stories

• 0:03
  Nancy May: So Sylvia, how are you doing today?
• 0:05
  Sylvia France: I am absolutely great.
• 0:07
  It's been a good Monday
• 0:10
  Nancy May: I'm glad to hear that.
• 0:11
  But I have one question for you.
• 0:13
  Sylvia France: Uh-oh
• 0:14
  Nancy May: Yeah, I know, right?
• 0:16
  Do you wish that you had one of those neat little recipe boxes, you know, the kind that are all handwritten
• 0:21
  lovingly so with perfect handwriting and script in tidy categories and alphabetically ordered just right?
• 0:28
  Sylvia France: That would be in my recipe dreams, but that's not the reality for me or for most of us either.
• 0:35
  wrapped in Saran Wrap
• 0:37
  Nancy May: Oh, no.
• 0:38
  Sylvia France: I couldn't believe it.
• 0:39
  It was actually my mom's wedding present in 1959, her Betty Crocker Picture Cookbook
• 0:46
  Nancy May: So I'm gonna guess since your mom was such a good cook that she didn't make any of those recipes
• 0:52
  Sylvia France: I am sure she did not make any of the recipes in the cookbook, or very few that she had
• 0:58
  stuffed in the cookbook, but I do know of one that she actually made
• 1:02
  Nancy May: Well, I got a cookbook as a stand-in for one that I really
• 1:06
  wanted, but I'll tell you what happens later on in the show about that one
• 1:10
  Sylvia France: I can't wait to hear it.
• 1:12
  I'm sure it's a good story
• 1:13
  Nancy May: Oh, it is.
• 1:14
  So on that note, folks, thank you for being here.
• 1:17
  , We're glad that you're listening today.
• 1:19
  This is Family Tree Food and Stories.
• 1:21
  I'm Nancy May
• 1:22
  Sylvia France: And I'm Sylvia France.
• 1:24
  Follow the show.
• 1:25
  Leave a review and tell us where in the world you're listening from, maybe even Omaha, Nebraska
• 1:31
  Nancy May: I think we have a few there.
• 1:32
  .. And tell us what's sitting on your kitchen counter right now . Because we read
• 1:36
  every note on Facebook and on our website, which is Podcast.FamilyTreeFoodStories.com
• 1:41
  - Sylvia France: Every episode really comes down to two of the same things.
• 1:45
  It's a piece of real history, and a question we're still trying to answer.
• 1:50
  I like to think of it as history and mystery of food
• 1:54
  Nancy May: I love that part, There's always a little mystery in everything we eat.
• 1:57
  Eh, well, maybe not.
• 1:58
  Let's hopefully not too much.
• 2:00
  But today both of us are talking about recipes, how that actually got into our hands or your hands, and what you
• 2:07
  do with each one, , and the ones that still won't give up their stories
• 2:10
  Sylvia France: Well, I think it's right now a good time for a proper toast
• 2:14
  Nancy May: I agree with you.
• 2:16
  I'm ready to drink just about any time.
• 2:18
  Oh, no, that doesn't sound too good though.
• 2:19
  But
• 2:20
  Sylvia France: As long as you're not driving, you're good
• 2:22
  Nancy May: No, I'm good.
• 2:22
  We're just sitting here at the mic, which might be even more dangerous.
• 2:25
  But what's in your glass, Sylvia?
• 2:28
  Sylvia France: Well, by looking at what you're holding, those
• 2:31
  look like they could've been your mom's champagne glasses.
• 2:34
  Am I correct?
• 2:36
  Nancy May: You are correct.
• 2:37
  They were a wedding gift, and that was a gift to me when we got married.
• 2:40
  It's not a book, but it does tell their own story
• 2:43
  Sylvia France: I think I would rather have the champagne glasses than the, the Saran Wrap cookbook myself
• 2:48
  Nancy May: Well, , I think we're ready to toast with a Negroni
• 2:52
  Sylvia France: Oh, yes.
• 2:53
  It's one of my favorites, and I know it's yours as well.
• 2:56
  It's equal parts gin, Campari, sweet red vermouth over ice with an orange peel
• 3:03
  Nancy May: So where did the Negroni come from?
• 3:05
  Sylvia France: Well, legend has it a bartender in Florence just added gin to the count's usual drink in
• 3:11
  1919 and nobody ever wrote down exactly why he made the adjustments
• 3:17
  Nancy May: Ooh.
• 3:18
  And the ones that we got, however, we got them
• 3:21
  Sylvia France: To the recipes that we've got, however we got them,
• 3:25
  Nancy May: And not knowing why.
• 3:27
  I like that part.
• 3:29
  So my mom had this chicken dish that she made, and I always asked for it on my birthday.
• 3:35
  She never wrote it down that I know of
• 3:38
  Sylvia France: Never.
• 3:38
  It's hard to believe she never wrote it down anywhere
• 3:41
  Nancy May: Well, apparently she did.
• 3:43
  My sister got it.
• 3:44
  But she made it over and over until I could make it just by watching her
• 3:49
  Sylvia France: That's actually the oldest way a recipe moves.
• 3:51
  Nobody needed to read or write.
• 3:53
  They just needed to be standing in the room enough times with the person who made it and they loved
• 3:58
  Nancy May: That's also why most of them don't survive.
• 4:01
  I only wrote it down, at least that one, which I refer to as Mom's Birthday Chicken or Mom's Special Chicken,
• 4:07
  because a podcast host where I was a guest asked me for the recipe
• 4:11
  Sylvia France: So the only reason it exists on paper is that somebody
• 4:14
  finally asked and your sister didn't fess up that she had it
• 4:18
  Nancy May: I know, not at that time.
• 4:20
  But that's the only reason that I have a copy of it here, So writing
• 4:24
  your own recipe down used to be a luxury though, did you know that?
• 4:27
  Sylvia France: I did
• 4:28
  Nancy May: And well, for others who don't know it, for most of history, wealthy households did it because
• 4:34
  it took somebody who could actually read or write to be able to put a recipe on a card or a piece of paper
• 4:39
  Sylvia France: So it sounds like that a recipe or recipe book was actually a status symbol
• 4:45
  Nancy May: Sometimes worse than that though.
• 4:46
  Remember our friend Amelia Simmons?
• 4:48
  Well, she wasn't really our friend 'cause we weren't there.
• 4:52
  Sylvia France: I'm not that old.
• 4:53
  Excuse me.
• 4:54
  Nancy May: But that was from our Revolutionary War series,
• 4:56
  and Amelia was the orphan who wrote the first American cookbook
• 5:01
  Sylvia France: I think if I remember correctly, it was like 1796 or something like that.
• 5:06
  Nancy May: Yep, it was, and, , that one was called American Cookery.
• 5:09
  She couldn't write it herself because she was illiterate, and she got a transcriber to help her.
• 5:15
  Then, mystery here, the transcriber , used their own preferences on amounts of things, and kinda sabotaged her own
• 5:23
  words or redesigned the recipes , and then that's what actually got sold
• 5:28
  Sylvia France: So it sounds like first American cookbook was launched with an actual accusation of foul play
• 5:35
  Nancy May: Yeah, no pun- intended, right?
• 5:36
  'Cause I'm sure there's a few pieces of fowl that were cooked in there,
• 5:39
  Sylvia France: The chickens or turkeys or
• 5:41
  Nancy May: something
• 5:41
  like that, pheasant.
• 5:43
  But still, we don't actually know almost 230 years later whether she was right or wrong
• 5:49
  Sylvia France: So history and mystery in 1796
• 5:54
  Nancy May: I love that part.
• 5:55
  And regular people, how did they write things down?
• 5:58
  Sylvia France: Well, they actually had to wait.
• 6:00
  Ordinary literacy, especially for women, didn't really catch on until the last couple of hundred years.
• 6:06
  . Before that, an average woman writing her own recipe in her own hand basically wasn't a thing
• 6:13
  - Nancy May: So even a, few words that somebody else had written themselves was kind of a big deal
• 6:17
  Sylvia France: It is, and it's really recent, which I did not know
• 6:21
  Nancy May: And then printing, well, I think you know about printing 'cause your family had a print shop, right?
• 6:25
  Sylvia France: They did
• 6:26
  Nancy May: Well, that suddenly changes everything where everybody's handwritten recipe now becomes black and white and ink
• 6:33
  Sylvia France: So they were handing you or selling you what became the recipe box, the actual card in a little tin.
• 6:40
  It got because companies were stapling their own recipe to a coupon and mailing it out
• 6:46
  Nancy May: can't imagine that.
• 6:47
  That must have been a lot of hard work stapling all those recipes
• 6:50
  Sylvia France: I know, where the… It's like I wonder if you know,
• 6:53
  Nancy May: And expensive too, right?
• 6:54
  Sylvia France: Oh, yeah, especially then
• 6:56
  Nancy May: Right?
• 6:56
  So the little box that we all picture of grandma having, I
• 7:00
  always picture it as this cardboard box with brown things on it.
• 7:03
  I don't know why they're brown.
• 7:04
  Like, brown fruits and brown whatever.
• 7:07
  That's my image of grandma's recipe box
• 7:10
  Sylvia France: Oh, I always think of it a little bit brighter with blues and pinks and orange,
• 7:13
  but, maybe it's just a Southern thing.
• 7:16
  So I think it's interesting that the recipe box actually started out as a marketing tool.
• 7:22
  It doesn't make the recipes bad.
• 7:24
  It just means they didn't start out neutral.
• 7:27
  There was a motive behind it
• 7:29
  Nancy May: Ugh, there's always a motive behind something in the kitchen, I think
• 7:33
  Sylvia France: You know, those marketing departments.
• 7:35
  so what do you actually have then?
• 7:37
  Something written, something shown
• 7:40
  Nancy May: Well, for me, my mom left me something written, just barely.
• 7:44
  these little books called Make It Now, Bake It Later, and she loved those books.
• 7:48
  We'd pick up every new copy of it in the Marion, Massachusetts little gift store whenever we went there.
• 7:54
  But she put her notes in the margins, a few words in pencil, mostly whenever she liked it
• 7:59
  Sylvia France: Was it a check mark or something different?
• 8:01
  Nancy May: Sometimes it was a little more, it was a little less, like who she
• 8:04
  made it for, and whether she changed the recipe just a little bit to make it better
• 8:10
  Sylvia France: So speaking of your mom's cookbook, remember you teased
• 8:13
  me with the top of the show, the one you said you'd explain later?
• 8:17
  Is it time yet?
• 8:18
  Nancy May: Well, I can make a time if you want.
• 8:20
  So my mom had this Joy of Cooking cookbook, and we used it all the
• 8:24
  time, or I used it all the time to make recipes for cookies.
• 8:27
  Oh my God, one day I made cookies with too much salt because I read the recipe wrong.
• 8:31
  Yeah.
• 8:32
  Hmm.
• 8:33
  Not very good, yeah.
• 8:34
  My dad tried everything that I ever made, and he just took a bite of those.
• 8:37
  He said, "Pretty good, sweetie, but a little salty." So
• 8:43
  Sylvia France: He was very nice about it.
• 8:44
  He didn't say yuck
• 8:46
  Nancy May: No, no he didn't, including the bread that he cracked a knife in, but that's for another story.
• 8:50
  So, but my sister got The Joy of Cooking cookbook and her three-by-five index cards.
• 8:56
  Not too many of them, but she had a few.
• 8:58
  I think she got those because my sister and her husband were married, I think probably about six years before we were.
• 9:04
  But I also think that I got the other cookbooks because my mom
• 9:07
  was probably tired of cooking for everybody at that time too
• 9:10
  Sylvia France: So tell me what you got.
• 9:12
  Nancy May: Well, nothing honestly, so kind of pissed me off that my
• 9:16
  sister got that cookbook, but I went looking for a substitute.
• 9:19
  And I went looking for, just happened by accident, somebody else's thinking, well, if somebody else's
• 9:25
  mom loved it, I'm gonna make them a substitute mom at least in my cookbook
• 9:30
  Sylvia France: I really love that.
• 9:30
  I've always asked for substitute moms along the way, especially
• 9:30
  in regards to cooking, 'cause we all know why with my mom.
• 9:32
  So did you find it
• 9:40
  Nancy May: I did.
• 9:41
  I found one at the church fair in Western Connecticut at the Immanuel Episcopal Church.
• 9:45
  We always pick something up there.
• 9:47
  It was a stranger's Joy of Cooking cookbook, her handwritten
• 9:50
  notes in it, along with a few little stuffed secrets as well.
• 9:54
  I
• 9:54
  have no idea who she was, though, but I still love that cookbook
• 9:57
  Sylvia France: well, I guess it's keeping her memory alive.
• 10:00
  Even though you didn't know her, you still have the treasures of her favorite recipes and her
• 10:04
  notes
• 10:05
  Nancy May: I wish I had her name in it though, , but mine is also now a time capsule of my own stuff.
• 10:10
  I stuff it with clippings and notes and, yeah, a few things of my mom's as well, including Grandma's rhubarb wine.
• 10:17
  and that apple pie recipe, which is always my go-to
• 10:20
  Sylvia France: Did you know that there are nine editions of Joy of
• 10:22
  Cooking now, and it's still put out by Irma Rombauer's own family?
• 10:26
  That's four generations
• 10:29
  Nancy May: I did.
• 10:29
  But meanwhile, your book's author, Betty Crocker, wasn't even a real person.
• 10:34
  Ha ha.
• 10:35
  Sylvia France: I know, rub it in
• 10:36
  Nancy May: Betty Crocker was invented by a committee in 1921
• 10:39
  - Sylvia France: So one cookbook runs on an actual bloodline, and mine's been fictional since day one.
• 10:45
  Oh, that marketing department again.
• 10:48
  Nancy May: You know, I wonder how many cookbooks are still written by families like The Joy of Cooking.
• 10:52
  We'll have to look into that one
• 10:54
  Sylvia France: Oh, I would love to.
• 10:55
  So let's go back to my mom's cookbook.
• 10:59
  Mine is less orderly than either one of yours, honestly.
• 11:03
  My mom's cookbook is a real junk drawer.
• 11:06
  Clippings, box panels, recipes she thought she ought to have, whatever anybody handed her at a party
• 11:12
  Nancy May: No, that doesn't sound like your mom
• 11:15
  Sylvia France: Oh, not at all.
• 11:16
  Miss OCD, that everything has to be in its place and it doesn't move for at least 20 years.
• 11:21
  So that's what I thought was hysterical about this book.
• 11:24
  And also, I found this salmon casserole recipe in there, and even funnier, she doesn't like salmon at all.
• 11:33
  I also found these recipes dated back to 1974 that were also in things like a popcorn popper and a,
• 11:44
  dish that you could make a cake in a Crockpot
• 11:48
  Nancy May: Oh.
• 11:48
  So you know what?
• 11:49
  1974, that's retro nowadays.
• 11:51
  It's all back.
• 11:52
  You might have to bring those out.
• 11:54
  But did she actually love any of them?
• 11:57
  Sylvia France: Oh, she loved her pecan pie.
• 11:59
  We lived in an old pecan grove, and as slave labor, my - brother and I had to go pick pecans on a nightly
• 12:05
  basis when they came in so the only recipe that was revered was the pecan pie and then my grandma's syrup cake
• 12:14
  Nancy May: Oh, that pecan pie actually sounds like torture as far as memories go but did you like it?
• 12:19
  Sylvia France: Absolutely not.
• 12:21
  Nancy May: Okay.
• 12:22
  I can see why
• 12:22
  Sylvia France: Well, I'm not a big sweet person, so it was like
• 12:25
  just karo syrup and brown sugar on top of stuff, and it's just,
• 12:30
  Nancy May: Not my thing either, but I get it
• 12:32
  Sylvia France: So, that's the same way with the syrup cake.
• 12:35
  So my mom said everybody loved it, so I put it out on Facebook, and
• 12:39
  the only person that came up who actually had it was my first cousin
• 12:43
  Nancy May: Hmm.
• 12:44
  So now what?
• 12:45
  Sylvia France: Well, it was interesting.
• 12:46
  His retort back was, "Well, did you know where she kept it?" And I was like, "Well, I was thinking a special dish.
• 12:53
  I was, you know,
• 12:54
  had a, you know, a box, up on the counter." No, it's in her curio that
• 13:00
  had all of her favorite treasures, so it must have been very special to her.
• 13:04
  And I informed my cousin that I actually have the curio in my dining room, and he's like, "What?"
• 13:11
  So he didn't even know I had it, which was funny.
• 13:13
  Nancy May: Well, I hope that didn't start, any family wars
• 13:15
  Sylvia France: No, he knows it's in good hands, and I love it
• 13:18
  … Nancy May: So at least we know that somebody loved it, and we just don't know whether she actually made it or not
• 13:23
  Sylvia France: Well, we did.
• 13:24
  We finally got to the bottom of that but the real mystery here is how did she make it?
• 13:30
  Because her recipe was extremely very vague
• 13:34
  Nancy May: Well, we're gonna hold that thought for a second because I wanna go back to the recipe box.
• 13:38
  Because we got a story from one of our listeners, Michelle Raginsberger, who
• 13:43
  has a recipe box stuffed with her mom's cards, and her dad built the box itself
• 13:49
  Sylvia France: Oh, that's so sweet.
• 13:50
  You have the cards and something that was built by her father
• 13:54
  Nancy May: I know by hand.
• 13:55
  It's a plain silver box, nothing fancy, but the size is built exactly for her mom's cards, so they fit perfectly
• 14:02
  Sylvia France: That must be the most written for somebody specific object we've talked about this whole show.
• 14:07
  He Wasn't just storing her recipes.
• 14:09
  He was just making sure they would be safe forever
• 14:13
  . Nancy May: And you know what?
• 14:14
  We've got a picture of that in our Facebook group.
• 14:16
  I'm sure Michelle would be happy to share it with others
• 14:18
  Sylvia France: Speaking of outlasting somebody, after the break we're gonna take a swing at my grandma's instructions and
• 14:25
  a few more to see if anybody can actually get what this cake is supposed to be
• 14:30
  Nancy May: I'm looking forward to that one
• 17:39
  .. So we're back, So if any of this has you looking at what you've got sitting in your drawer somewhere, or you know where you
• 17:45
  got it from, start by asking, where did the person who gave it to you get it from?
• 17:50
  Sylvia France: Not just what the recipe is.
• 17:52
  Ask why they made it, who taught them, what it was actually for.
• 17:55
  Was it for a celebration or it was just every day?
• 17:59
  Nancy May: And, you know, getting that information doesn't need to be fancy or formal or even written down.
• 18:03
  You can give them a call, - get it in a text message, or just take a picture of it and send it on down the line to them
• 18:09
  Sylvia France: so do you have an example of that?
• 18:11
  Nancy May: Well, kinda sorta.
• 18:12
  I actually have proof that I did make a particular recipe.
• 18:16
  It was my mom's nut ring or nut loaf, and I was a Girl Scout.
• 18:20
  , I have the recipe card that was taped on the bottom of the plate because
• 18:23
  the judges need to have the recipe when we were doing the bake-off.
• 18:27
  And I've got a photo of me as a Girl Scout just to prove that I actually did this
• 18:31
  Sylvia France: I saw the pictures and you're too cute for words.
• 18:35
  Nancy May: yeah, don't go there.
• 18:36
  Sylvia France: it sounds like the plate came with its own footnote
• 18:39
  Nancy May: Well, I'm not sure I would call it that, but just a recipe card that I wrote out by hand in my cat scratch.
• 18:45
  And some people took it a little bit further there because there's real documented practice of putting recipes on
• 18:50
  headstones, which is a little different than a Girl Scout cook-off plate.
• 18:54
  I don't know how we got from Girl Scouts to headstones, but that's pretty gruesome still.
• 18:58
  Sylvia France: Headstone sounds like it's a little bit more permanent than a three-by-five card
• 19:03
  Nancy May: But there's apparently a woman in Brooklyn, well, maybe she was a Girl Scout too at some point,
• 19:08
  in Green-Wood Cemetery that actually has her spritz cookie recipe carved into her headstone, ingredients and
• 19:14
  the details of that recipe right down to the T, or maybe down to the head.
• 19:19
  Sylvia France: Well, that sounds like a very expensive headstone to me, but I'm sure that it's worth it.
• 19:24
  And you know what?
• 19:26
  I think it's kind of interesting that I actually, this Southern girl
• 19:30
  from Florida, have relatives who are planted in the Greenwood Cemetery
• 19:35
  Nancy May: You do, so do I. Talk about small world or maybe small cemetery
• 19:40
  Sylvia France: Well, actually, maybe not as small as it sounds.
• 19:43
  Greenwood used to be one of the biggest tourist attractions in the country over
• 19:47
  a half a million visitors a year at its peak, second only to Niagara Falls.
• 19:52
  Nancy May: Wait, Niagara Falls?
• 19:53
  Are you kidding me?
• 19:55
  So people wanted to go to a cemetery on vacation almost as much as, I guess, the honeymoon spot of the country
• 20:01
  Sylvia France: Well, you know those Victorian cemeteries, they like to have a lunch with their ancestors.
• 20:06
  Nancy May: I'm glad I live in today and not then.
• 20:09
  Sylvia France: so it was on purpose.
• 20:10
  It's even why Central Park exists.
• 20:12
  Cities saw how much people loved walking around places like Greenwood, so they built parks to match
• 20:19
  Nancy May: So two families, yours from down here and mine from up north, opposite ends of at least the Eastern
• 20:24
  Seaboard, and we both end up, well, I'll just say it, in the same ditch.
• 20:30
  Sylvia France: They were planted next to each other.
• 20:32
  . For 100 years, that's where ambitious families wanted to end up
• 20:35
  Nancy May: Which means everybody's got an actual assignment next time that you happen to be in Brooklyn
• 20:40
  Sylvia France: I want to go find the cookie lady
• 20:43
  Nancy May: Yeah, go find the cookie lady.
• 20:44
  I'm gonna presume she wasn't a Girl Scout
• 20:46
  Sylvia France: No, probably not, but I wanna try her recipe for sure
• 20:50
  , Nancy May: I don't know.
• 20:50
  Spritz cookies are pretty simple, but still, maybe she's got a different hook
• 20:54
  Sylvia France: Okay, I guess I was thinking Aperol Spritz, the cousin
• 20:57
  to the Negroni.
• 21:00
  Nancy May: I got it.
• 21:01
  But since we're on the subject of things a recipe doesn't tell you, or maybe what the
• 21:05
  ghosts are keeping from us, we can talk about how much old recipes just leave out.
• 21:10
  How about that?
• 21:11
  Sylvia France: My favorite is butter the size of an egg
• 21:14
  Nancy May: So that's a real one.
• 21:16
  Really threw me for a loop, and it actually works out to be about a quarter
• 21:20
  of a cup, which is usually doing a lot of work in that sense for sure
• 21:24
  Sylvia France: I like a teacup of flour
• 21:26
  Nancy May: That one's even worse.
• 21:27
  A teacup never has actually been standardized, depending upon who's in
• 21:30
  the kitchen and where you are and where you're standing or who's talking about it.
• 21:34
  A teacup is usually about a half a cup to a full cup, and if you're me, it's a cup or a mug of coffee, not a teacup.
• 21:42
  Sylvia France: It's more s- like a 10-ounce cup
• 21:44
  Nancy May: Yeah, 12 to 14 for sure at my house.
• 21:47
  Sylvia France: So two people making the same recipe could have ended up with two completely different cakes
• 21:52
  Nancy May: Pretty much.
• 21:53
  And then there's yours.
• 21:55
  Your Grandma Knight syrup cake, which says, I believe, "Reduce the
• 21:58
  heat after almost done," which is, how do you figure that one out?
• 22:02
  Sylvia France: I had no clue.
• 22:04
  Do you?
• 22:05
  Nancy May: No, I had no idea.
• 22:07
  But a woman named Maria Parola was running a cooking school in
• 22:11
  Boston in 1877, and then she ran another school in New York in 1882.
• 22:17
  That's sort of predating Julia Childs and Jacques Pépin.
• 22:21
  But since we're talking about the ladies here, we'll leave it with Julia.
• 22:24
  And she was teaching cooking as an actual subject, kind of like home ec class when I was in school.
• 22:30
  Sylvia France: I understand she was actually teaching it to immigrants, which I think is cool
• 22:34
  Nancy May: Oh, I didn't know that.
• 22:35
  I think they probably cooked better than the rest of us did.
• 22:37
  But, there was a right way and a wrong way to measure things, and she did that almost 20 years before Fannie
• 22:42
  Farmer's Cookbook made a level cup and a level spoon as part of their household phrases and recipes at least
• 22:50
  Sylvia France: I did hear of Fannie Farmer, but not until recently Maria Parola
• 22:55
  Nancy May: I hadn't either until we were doing this episode.
• 22:57
  But Farmer's the one who gets all the credit, sadly, and Parola's the one who's
• 23:01
  already been standing in the kitchen doing it and showing everybody else how to do it
• 23:05
  Sylvia France: Well, you know, that tracks with everything else we've been talking about today.
• 23:08
  Honestly, the person who actually did the thing isn't the name that always survives.
• 23:13
  They get forgotten
• 23:14
  Nancy May: No.
• 23:15
  Pharma got the name recognition though, . Then there's an actual Fannie Farmer recipe cabinet.
• 23:20
  Did you know that?
• 23:21
  Sylvia France: It sounds like a recipe box to me
• 23:23
  Nancy May: Kind of.
• 23:23
  It's a little wooden box from 1913.
• 23:26
  It was sold pre-filled with all sorts of recipe cards
• 23:30
  Sylvia France: So that was an actual thing
• 23:32
  Nancy May: Yeah, it was an actual thing.
• 23:33
  A company called and Klein- Scully and Kleincheckt made them, - and
• 23:36
  there's even a magazine ad that we found from 1925 advertising it
• 23:40
  Sylvia France: So her name got licensed into the exact kind of box we're talking about all this episode
• 23:46
  Nancy May: Sometimes the names get written down, sometimes they don't.
• 23:49
  So what do we actually do with that syrup cape that you've got there, Sylvia?
• 23:53
  Sylvia France: Well, I took a swing.
• 23:55
  I promised.
• 23:56
  It says bake at 400, then reduce after almost done to 350
• 24:00
  Nancy May: That's not a time, that's kind of a look-see
• 24:03
  Sylvia France: That was kind of my guess too.
• 24:05
  . Bake it till hot to get the rise going, then back it off once the top
• 24:09
  is set but the middle is probably still soft so it finishes without burning.
• 24:13
  So I put a toothpick in the middle of it to see if it was still wet when I pulled it out
• 24:18
  Nancy May: Kind of sounds like two-stage authentication a la internet although in the kitchen
• 24:23
  Sylvia France: Kind of like CAPTCHA.
• 24:24
  Are you a human being?
• 24:25
  A two-stage bake is what I've heard.
• 24:27
  It's a real technique still used for dense cakes today.
• 24:31
  We just can't prove that's actually what she meant since neither of us watched her do it.
• 24:36
  We're not that old yet
• 24:37
  Nancy May: Yeah, not yet.
• 24:38
  But Have you actually tried making it yourself,
• 24:40
  Sylvia France: I did.
• 24:41
  I just mentioned that, it was one of those things on a whim.
• 24:44
  I was going to a meeting of people who were Florida pioneer families, and I brought the syrup cake
• 24:50
  Nancy May: Hmm.
• 24:51
  So how did it taste?
• 24:52
  Sylvia France: It actually was too sweet for me, '. But my cousin, my first cousin actually ate it
• 24:58
  , he was a prince, and to , put it into context, he did serve our country in
• 25:02
  the Army, and so when he would come home on leave, she would make it for him
• 25:06
  Nancy May: Aw.
• 25:07
  I like that.
• 25:07
  I'll have to tell you about the cake that my grandma sent to my dad in a Tupper- well, it wasn't a Tupperware, some
• 25:13
  sort of contraption - in the war that actually made it to him somewhere across overseas, but that's for another story.
• 25:19
  Sylvia France: Oh, I can't wait to hear it.
• 25:21
  Nancy May: so before we go, there are five things out of today that you can use
• 25:25
  Sylvia France: One, cherish what you've got by actually asking about it.
• 25:29
  Every splash and grease spot has a story.
• 25:31
  A recipe with no story attached is just instructions
• 25:35
  Nancy May: And my favorites are the ones that are written out by hand, and ones with the little grease spots on it too
• 25:41
  Sylvia France: Two, preserve it however you can actually keep up with it, a
• 25:44
  journal, a phone note, a text thread, or even a picture you post on Facebook
• 25:49
  Nancy May: Do you actually do any of those?
• 25:51
  Sylvia France: I do.
• 25:52
  I have so many people requesting the recipes that I did get that
• 25:56
  I have put them on Facebook 'cause that's the easiest for me
• 26:00
  Nancy May: Yep, that's a good way to do it.
• 26:02
  So anybody who's in our Facebook group, you can get those too, right, Sylvia?
• 26:05
  Sylvia France: including grandma and I's syrup cake recipe.
• 26:08
  Nancy May: I like that.
• 26:10
  three, don't let missing instructions scare you off.
• 26:12
  . Butter the size of an egg is annoying, but it's not impossible, and yes, there are different size eggs.
• 26:18
  But you can figure it out
• 26:20
  Sylvia France: so call it a quarter of a cup, adjust from there, and let Google be your friend
• 26:25
  Nancy May: Four.
• 26:25
  So go ahead and make it on your own.
• 26:27
  I've had plenty of flops, but they still somehow taste good
• 26:31
  Sylvia France: So tell me about some of your flops
• 26:34
  Nancy May: Well, my mom's Yorkshire pudding never made it.
• 26:37
  It always turned into a mess, but my popovers were famous up north until we got down south.
• 26:43
  Turns out that humidity and altitude does make difference with a recipe.
• 26:47
  I'm still working on that one
• 26:49
  Sylvia France: All right, I volunteer to be a guinea pig.
• 26:51
  And five, document what you make now for whoever comes after you,
• 26:56
  and ask your mom, your sister, your aunt, your father while you're at it.
• 27:01
  Some people care enough to put a recipe in a will or, as we mentioned, even a headstone
• 27:07
  Nancy May: And sometimes your neighbors are really good guinea pigs.
• 27:09
  So to the ones that we have the recipes , and to however we got them
• 27:15
  Sylvia France: To the recipes we love, cherish, and sometimes don't understand
• 27:20
  Nancy May: and next time, stay tuned because we're opening a different
• 27:23
  drawer, or maybe . we're going into a different shelf in the refrigerator.
• 27:27
  This one's about butter and butter stamps and molds, and how you can make one and do it yourself
• 27:32
  Sylvia France: So thank you for listening and for digging through our own drawers or cabinets with us.
• 27:37
  Happy cooking and happy experimenting
• 27:40
  Nancy May: Now I am ready for that Negroni.
• 27:43
  Sylvia France: Oh, you and me both, honey.