I hit 47 different old recipes in my grandmother's box before I realized something

I was counting through all the handwritten cards my grandma left me last weekend and got to 47 before I stopped. Every single one of them had some ingredient I haven't seen in stores for decades, like a spice called mace or that canned evaporated milk she swore by. It blew my mind that people actually cooked this stuff every day, not just for holidays. My mom told me her mom would make a 'jellied meat loaf' every Sunday for 20 years straight. Has anyone else found a crazy high number of recipes in a single box that nobody makes anymore?

2 comments

2 Comments

sagelane1d ago

Funny enough, I used to think old recipes were overly complicated for no reason, like they were just making things hard on themselves. But after finding my own stash with stuff like "sweetbreads" and "head cheese," I totally get now that they were just working with what they had. That jellied meat loaf thing your mom mentioned, that actually sounds kind of genius in a weird way, like a built in leftovers solution before Tupperware was everywhere. Mace is actually still around in some spice shops (I looked it up after finding it in my grandma's box), but you have to hunt for it versus just grabbing nutmeg. It's kind of cool how these recipes feel like little time capsules from a world that ran on different rules and pantry staples than we do now.

the_wesley1d ago

Right, like they just randomly decided to name stuff "head cheese" for fun, not because that's literally what was left over after butchering.