Family recipe questions
Every family loses recipes the same way: the cook dies, the card survives, and the card is wrong. It is right for ingredients and wrong for everything the hands knew. These questions capture the rest.
Every guide in this family works the same way: ask slowly, one question at a time, and write down the year you asked. The related guides — questions to ask your grandparents, how to record family stories, and the full guide index — cover the rest of the method.
About the recipe itself
- What does the card leave out that your hands just do?
- What is the measurement you never measure — and what would it actually be?
- What do people in the family get wrong when they make it, and what does getting it wrong change?
- How do you know when it is done without a timer?
About where it came from
- Who made this before you, and where did they learn it?
- What was happening in the family the first time you remember eating it?
- Did it change over the years — cheaper some decades, richer others?
- What did you eat it with that nobody serves anymore?
About the cook
- What did your kitchen sound like when you were making it?
- Who was usually there when this got made?
- What dish did you make that you never made for anyone outside the family?
The ones to ask while watching
- Can I make it next to you, and you tell me when I do it wrong?
- What does it look like right before the step that matters?
- What would you never do to this recipe, even though people do?
The one-rule method: cook it once together and record the session — video, not notes. A measurement written down survives; a wrist motion survives only on film. Save the recording and the written recipe together in the vault, with the year and the name of everyone who has made it.