Part Three Handwritten Recipes As Folk Art

PART THREE

HANDWRITTEN RECIPES AS FOLK ART - OR EVIDENCE OF FOLK CULTURE

     As we've written about previously, many times in fact, we are attracted to handwritten recipes for many different reasons, but most of them centre on the reality they represent not only cookery heritage, but domestic folk history. This didn't dawn on Suzanne and I in the early going of collecting, which in the early 1980's, was an inadvertent start-up based initially on the acquisition of old cookbooks from local auctions sales. In other words, we were buying boxes of old books from farm and estate auctions, and when we brought them home to sort through the collections, found many folded and otherwise inserted handwritten recipes. Chances are you've found these, held them in your hands, watched your grandmother, mother, or aunt (maybe grandfather, father and uncle) fold them back up when the cooking was complete, tucked back into a favorite cookbook, to be found again when needed. Not a great mystery about why they were, and are still tucked into old books. It was for safe-keeping obviously. On this paper trail of course, are a forensic audit of greasy fingerprints, butter staining, evidence of icing, gravy, residue of flower and baking powder, and of course, scented by the spices of the world.
     Suzanne and I began separating these handwritten recipes, simply because the grease and other contaminates over many years, were breaking down the paper of the cookbook pages themselves. As some of these books were significantly valuable, we had no choice but to try and conserve them by removing the residue of the cookery ages, including these handwritten recipes on assorted materials. After a year of so of sorting these bits and pieces of paper heritage, and keeping them in a special archival container, we took some time to re-examine the haul we'd made from about three hundred or so cookbooks. By the way, these handwritten recipes could be found stuffed into family Bibles, Hymn Books, old hardcover novels and non-fiction, and even photo albums. We soon noticed the beautifully lettered Victorian era recipes from a period where penmanship was a big deal, and paid special attention to what these recipes were written upon. This became of greater interest in our folk history research, because we found that the materials used spoke of the importance of the recipes, the sheer happenstance when they were acquired, and often the budget of material and time to scribble them down; such as when there was a casual meeting on a bus or in a store, when one friend asked the other for a particular, badly needed recipe the other possessed. Often, of course, in these hurried-up meetings, from memory and not a recipe card they carried around with them.
     You've probably heard this a dozen times, when one person states to a friend, in passing, "I'll have to get you to give me that recipe for Yorkshire Pudding we had at your place." Or "I've got company coming over on Saturday, so could I borrow your recipe for that wonderful vegetable dip you made for the big game?" There's always the case the person fielding the request, can recite the recipe off-the-top so to speak, meaning that the "seeker of information" will have to find something in a pocket or pocket-book to be able to write the recipe down for future posterity. What this means, is that these on-the-fly recipe exchanges, have utilized all kinds of strange paper materials, such as the inside cover of matchbooks, the backs of invoices, such as telephone bills, hydro statements, blank bank deposit slips, medical appointment cards, and even memorial notices. In other words, these handwritten recipes of which we cherish, were not always composed with beautiful script on clean, unused pieces of writing paper. Recipes, as short or long as they were, might have also been written onto the back of old photographs, say at family reunions, or scribbled onto used product wrappers and grocery story receipts. A lot of recipes were exchanged in the aisles of those old time grocery stores, like the Red & White groceterias, like the neat oldtimer in MacTier, Ontario, and those mom and pop general stores where a checker board was set up on the wooden barrel tops, for the very next game. So these handwritten recipes carry with them, beyond the fingerprints and delicious scents still in evidence, considerable folk art and cookery heritage. They are way, way more important than just pieces of paper with recipes, that were stuffed into old cookbooks.
      We have found recipes on the backs of auto-repair bills, in the border of magazine pages, torn out for use of their white space, insides of macaroni and spaghetti boxes, on the back of cut-out coupons, on the reverse side of grocery receipts, and various single page hand-outs and advertisements. They are often written down with the names of the cooks who recited them, on scrap pieces of paper torn from notebooks, or the back pages of hardcover and softcover novels. We've seen hardcover books that had to company of handwritten recipes on the inside cover pages. Here's the jewel of handwritten recipes we didn't get. There was a hoosier cupboard out of a 1930's era home, that had handwritten recipes penned onto the inside surface of the cupboard, making it the most fascinating piece we've ever been made aware of, in our area of interest. We have an original hoosier cupboard with stained glass in our own kitchen at home, and I've been urging Suzanne to show her own penmanship by writing down her most cherished family recipes handed down by grandmother Shea of Ufford (Three Mile Lake area of the present Township of Muskoka Lakes). Maud Lewis, the hugely popular folk artist of Canada's east coast, did somewhat the same but with her naive paintings, and went well beyond the kitchen cupboards in their tiny abode. This is the kind of history we adore and collect as much as we can afford.
     The handwritten recipes, as a footnote, most often have to be checked out before being published in a formal text as we have been planning for several years, as our collection continues to grow. The problem with these handwritten recipes, is that many are either missing ingredients and are frequently in error regarding amounts to me used. Why is this so prevalent you may ask? As a large number of handwritten recipes were done this way by the happenstance of opportunity, meeting for example, a friend or relative casually, out and about, and asking for the details of a recipe at that precise moment. Sure, there's a good chance items will be left off, steps omitted, and ingredient volumes copied down in error of what is actually required for its amazing good taste. As well, and this reminds me of the cooking competitions between "Andy of Mayberry's" Aunt Bea, and neighbors, when wrong ingredients were purposely offered, in order to give one the advantage over the other. It wasn't just the fried chicken recipes that were held in secret. Many didn't want to give out the precise recipes that made their dishes stand-out, such as special ingredients. It was often heard in the dining rooms of the world, that "It just doesn't taste the same as Donna's lasagna, yet I used the recipe she gave me."
To emphasize this a little further, there's a scene in the situation comedy, "Home Improvement," when on the set of Tim Taylor's show "Tool Time," with guest host Al Borland, the "guys from K & B Construction, there to talk about home cooking on the construction site, that one of the iron workers showed Tim and Al how to make a grilled cheese sandwich with a blow torch. He made special mention of using good old "Wisconsin Cheese," but he deferred when it came to revealing the secret ingredient that made it taste so much better than other grilled cheese sandwiches. Tim finally gets him to reveal the special additive, and the construction cook reluctantly admits he always added a pinch of oregano to the bread. A lot of other home cooks shared this reluctance and never gave all the details that made their dishes so much better tasting. It's why these recipes have to be tested and not taken as being entirely accurate.
     Please join us again tomorrow when we post another interesting story about the significance of botPAh handwritten recipes, old cookbooks and other recipe sources. See you soon.