Recipe is one thing. The quality of the ingredients can make a difference.
Did Grammy use the Tasty Pastry flour, or Brand B?
And how do you know Grammy wasn’t Grandpa?
In response to our call, 174 readers wrote in with stories of plagiarized family recipes. Hailing from New York to Nicaragua, from Auckland, New Zealand, to Baghpat, India, they prove that this is a global phenomenon. The majority of readers described devastating discoveries: They found supposedly secret recipes in the pages of famous cookbooks, and heard confessions from parents whose legendary dessert recipes came from the side of Karo Syrup bottles.
Fittingly, one of the most extraordinary examples also echoed the cookie plotline from Friends:
Once I was the judge of a chocolate chip cookie recipe contest. We stipulated that all cookies had to be homemade, no mixes or frozen dough. The top three cookies were chosen, photographed, and presented in a local newspaper along with the recipes for them. Calls and letters poured in pointing out that the first place cookie was the Nestle Toll House recipe and the second place recipe was the Toll House recipe doubled.
–Jeff Miller, Fort Collins, Colorado
Several readers joked about family members threatening to take a secret recipe to the grave. To our surprise, we also received a story of a late-in-life confession:
My uncle was known around town as the “fudge man.” Every year, he would make pounds of it for Christmas parties, bake sales, and gifts. It was legendary—people would beg him for the recipe. When he was ill in the hospital, before he passed, his wife begged him for the recipe so she could keep his memory going. He replied, “It’s on the side of the marshmallow fluff container.”
Recipe is one thing. The quality of the ingredients can make a difference.
Did Grammy use the Tasty Pastry flour, or Brand B?
And how do you know Grammy wasn’t Grandpa?
Friends Season 7 Phoebe's Grandmother's Secret Chocolate Cookie recipe
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Lisa Kudrow....like Mrs. Pete Blonde and Left handed . (At the time we met, her hair was longer than Lisa Kudrow! On a windy day she walked around in a golden cloud! )
Cooking is chemistry. How you handle ingredients can change the outcome, especially in Baking. But even dead simple commercial stuff is subject to this. This is why two different people making a boxed Mac n Cheese side can have markedly different results.
My little sister was the only person I ever knew who made the Mock Apple Pie recipe off the Ritz cracker box. It was horrible.
The propagation of recipes has been around a very long time. There are even YouTube channels of old recipes, some dating back to the 17th Century, and likely earlier. Recently, I saw an 18th Century one for Butter simmered chicken, that is a whole chicken immersed in a LOT of butter. Called “Fowl or Chicken the Dutch Way.”
Schools used to teach Home Economics to girls, with ‘shop’ to boys. A big part of Home Ec was cooking. It was seen as a big plus on the track to become a housewife.
Cooking in the US came in waves. But recipe propagation was slower due to lack of published material. To have a cookbook was precious, and they came with many blank pages to fill in with recipes from others.
A huge splash came with the book “Joy of Cooking”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Joy_Of_Cooking
It was full of recipes, with commentary, during the Great Depression. Then a major revision came with WWII, with modifications for rationing, shortages, and substitutions.
Food manufacturers published recipes and held contests to find more recipes. Even the largest US grocery store chain in the US, held a nationwide contest for a “better chicken”, resulting in the standard chicken we see today. Though it is less flavorsome than ‘heritage chickens’ you can still find.
The 1950s and 1960s were full of exotic new ingredients and foreign recipes. But cooking has suffered with the loss of many women, due to “women’s liberation” and feminism.
I miss my mother’s potato salad. She taught me how to make it as a kid going for the cooking merit badge in the Boy Scouts. That recipe is long gone.
The good news is...I brought home a container of “Potato Salad-Southern Style” from Sam’s...and it could’ve been made by Mom. Exact same thing...taste and consistency. Now I have to restrain myself from overbuying the stuff.
Mama was a good cook.
My sister and I have realized that her famous such and such were all lifted straight from the Betty Crocker cookbook, 50s edition.
She knew how to cook, farmers daughter of 14, she grew up around farm crews and a lot of hearty meals that the girls and grandma would put together. Pretty big operation during the good weather months.
When she went to work it was always at school kitchens.
My very best friend for years had us to dinner. She served Arroz con pollo, I have never tasted anything so exotic and delicious. I asked her for the recipe which she said “no”. It was her mothers who was a pre-Castro Cuban, handed down for several generations and top secret. Six months later, after permission from the family she surprised me with the recipe, with my vow to NEVER give it to another soul.
I often find that “secret family recipes” aren’t all that great and I often prefer the ones from a mayonnaise jar or somewhere else readily available. A lot of these places have test kitchens and they’ve practiced and perfected the recipes after many, many trials.
My mother and aunts made some fantastic dishes, but I don’t know where they got the recipes.
There was a restaurant owner who wanted his mother’s potato salad recipe but the problem was everybody hated it.
My assistant kitchen manager came up with a brilliant plan - we made the mother’s recipe and kept a small container of it handy. But what we made in bulk and served was delicious and raved about.
When the owner came in for a visit we’d switch out - his security came in first so we knew he was coming. He’d make a beeline for the potato salad to check. Problem solved.
BOOKMARK
Growing up, we had A&P grocery stores in our town. My grandmother would buy Spanish Bar cake, which I loved. Years ago, I made Musselman apple butter recipe for apple butter cake, and it tasted exactly like that Spanish Bar cake, minus the raisins. The recipe is on musselman’s website, if anyone wants it.
As far as potato salad goes, there seems to be a wide variety of recipes. I’m praised for my potato salad wherever I take it; I never actually had a written recipe, though a friend told me how she made hers, so I tried to imitate hers, and it came out great. I recently watched a YouTube video for 100 year old recipe for NYC deli potato salad. I couldn’t believe that anyone would eat it the way it was made; nothing in it but potatoes, grated onion, salt, sugar, and mayonnaise mixed with water and vinegar. Yuk. But apparently, it was a popular item. But then, I’ve eaten food cooked by people who obviously couldn’t cook, and their families, who apparently didn’t know any better, thought it was good. There’s no accounting for other people’s taste.
Good read!
When Beau and I first started dating, I made Meatloaf for supper one evening. I, myself, LOVE meatloaf - especially leftovers for sandwiches.
Anyhow, try as I might, I just could NOT get the recipe right because he really, REALLY liked the meatloaf his late wife Lida made. I made z DOZEN different recipes and NONE of them were up to snuff.
I finally gave up, since I was never going to get it right anyway, and just bought a packet of Meatloaf Mix in with the spices from the grocery store for like 50-cents.
Guess what? THAT was the meatloaf he loves so much!
‘Secret Family Recipe’ my Aunt Fanny!
Had the same thing happen with Mom’s apple pie recipe:
Mom: “Take two Pillsbury dough pie crusts...”
Me: “Say it ain’t so!”
