Family cookbooks are books which contain a variety of
recipes
A recipe is a set of instructions that describes how to prepare or make something, especially a dish of prepared food. A sub-recipe or subrecipe is a recipe for an ingredient that will be called for in the instructions for the main recipe.
Hist ...
collected by specific families. Whilst these cookbooks are sometimes later published, the concept is of a
commonplace book
Commonplace books (or commonplaces) are a way to compile knowledge, usually by writing information into books. They have been kept from antiquity, and were kept particularly during the Renaissance and in the nineteenth century. Such books are simi ...
where useful recipes are retained and passed on to later
generations.
The recipes can be developed by the family or collated from other sources - and may be so familiar to the family that the origin is forgotten or not acknowledged.
Family cookbooks as memory
Whilst the primary function of a family cookbook is as a
scrapbook
Scrapbook may refer to:
* Scrapbooking, the process of making a scrapbook
Software
* Scrapbook, an early (1970s) information storage and retrieval system
* Scrapbook (Mac OS), a Mac OS application
* ScrapBook, a Firefox extension
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to collect recipes and cooking techniques, an important function is also to provide context and promote familial memory.
Scholars use these kinds of collected manuscripts to give insights into family history in the era when they were written, such as about gender roles and women's emancipation.
References
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See also
*
Commonplace book
Commonplace books (or commonplaces) are a way to compile knowledge, usually by writing information into books. They have been kept from antiquity, and were kept particularly during the Renaissance and in the nineteenth century. Such books are simi ...
*
Family traditions
Family tradition, also called family culture, is defined as an aggregate of attitudes, ideas and ideals, and environment, which a person inherits from their parents and ancestors.
Modern studies of family traditions
The study of family t ...
Cookbooks
Family