Preserving Family Recipes

Learn about creating a cookbook with your family's historic recipes during Part I, and bring some of those recipes to be digitized at the Historic Recipe Road Show during Part II!

Learn more about your family's culinary history, and how to preserve your family recipes during this two-part program!

1–2pm: Cooking Up Memories: Creating Your Family Cookbook, presented by EvaAnne Johnson 

2:15–3:30pm: Historic Recipe Road Show, presented by Culinary Historians of Northern Illinois

In the first hour, librarian EvaAnne Johnson will share how she compiled her local family's cherished recipes into a family cookbook, and share tips for how you can do the same. Learn about preserving family recipes, collaborating with relatives, discovering your culinary heritage, and the process of turning those recipes into a personalized family cookbook, ensuring that your treasured culinary memories endure for generations to come.

After the presentation, you'll have an opportunity to contribute your family recipes to the Cookery Manuscript Project during the Historic Recipe Road Show! The Culinary Historians of Northern Illinois (CHNI) is sending out a call for handwritten recipes at least 50 years old or older. Look now for mom’s, grandma’s, auntie, or dad’s recipes for the Cookery Manuscript Project as CHNI will be recording these historic recipes and related family culinary memories for their growing archive to study Illinois foodway and social history. Bring these to the Historic Recipe Road Show and meet with a culinary historian who can tell you more about your family recipes while they are being digitally preserved to become part of the CHNI’s digital collection.

Participants are encouraged to register their recipe and back story prior to the program via the CHNI website. 

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