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 think Alton Brown cribbed half of the recipes and techniques in the first two seasons of Good Eats directly from that book.
My Grandmother was from France and came here as a little girl in the late 1800’s. My Mom was born in the 1920’s. Both of them just cooked, no recipes. Both of them could whip up a pie, cake , cookie, or pastry from scratch that you would die for. My Grandma’s other cooking was good to excellent for just about anything, my Mom not so much. They taught my sister who can bake almost as good as them, still no recipes written down. My niece can’t boil water, so I guess the magic will pass with my sister.
My point is, not all family favorites came from a package, some were just good old fashioned cooking. My wife’s Grandmother and Mother handed down many of their Italian recipes, most just list ingredients without exact measures or cooking instructions. Thank god my wife can just cook most of the time as well.