How do old family recipes find there way into our families?

I love and cherish all of the old family recipes that are a part of my life. Some of them bring back such fond memories, some of them come with strong emotions, positive or negative, both good things. I have a hand written journal, that I keep for my children, that is a combination of all the family recipes I come across.  I fully intend to some day make it into individual handwritten copies for all of my children. I find that as I write my blog that I might just include a copy of it for them as well. As I write my cookbook journal I include new recipes that I make up or that I come across that have reference to our lives.  This has always got me thinking about how recipes became "old" family recipes.  I am sure that my grandmothers, or other ancestors, were no different than me in their choice of recipes to pass down to us.  I am an avid cookbook collector, I even give each of my children a cookbook, with an annual personal message from me to that child.  Bug, I am told, finds it be be one of his favorite gifts each year.  He likes to read what I have written him.  My two little girls proudly display theirs on their own shelf in our Studio.  They have been given the love of cookbooks very young.  Goofy once was upset with me that she didn't have more than the others, as she is older.  I told her that since I hadn't began doing it before I had  had all of them I couldn't go back and change the past but she didn't get it.  She threw that last one I gave her away, I retrieved it.  So I do sometimes still get them for her but I keep them here for the day that she may care enough to want them, if not they are here.  Mokie likes some of hers, some not as much.

I was going through one of my oldest books recently, it is a 4th edition of the My Better Homes and Garden "Cookbook" not their New Cookbook , which appeared in the 50's,  it was printed 4 months after the first edition, which was printed in October of 1930, mine was printed in February 1931.  It is one of my favorite cookbooks.  While I was going threw it I came across the pie section and was avidly reading the recipes, I love to read cookbooks, when I came across a Sour Cream Pie recipe and to my amazement I was looking at my grandmother Gladys's sour cream pie recipe.  I had never found any one who had ever heard of Our recipe, in all the years I had shared it with people, the same holds true with my mother and dad, but here it was.  Additionally my grandmothers mincemeat recipe was there on the same page.  I got to thinking, she would have been a young  teenager in 1931, she would have been just beginning her journey into cooking and soon would be married.   I can just imagine her enjoying these recipes and making them her own.   She would have written them down and put them into her recipe file,  maybe she didn't have a cookbook, it was the depression after all, maybe she could only copy the recipes down from a friends cookbook.  I don't really know but the possibilities are intriguing.  I can only guess at the joy she found in these two recipes, she had loved them both and shared them as hers for the duration of her life.  I think over time they had truly become her recipes, in heart and deed.  She may have never even remembered where she got them.  She loved them enough to pass them down to us, with all the love and memories she made from them, in the end they were hers. They like alot of the recipes in the cookbook were edited out in a few editions, so maybe they were hers all along.  I have previously shared the sour cream pie recipe so I will share the mincemeat one today.

Grandma Gladys's Mincemeat Recipe

2 pounds of lean meat (beef or venison)
1 pound finely chopped suet
6 cups sugar
4 pounds tart apples diced
3 pounds currants
2 pounds raisins
1/2 pound citron, cut fine
juice and grated rind of 2 oranges
juice and grated rind of 2 lemons
1 tablespoon salt
1 1/4 teaspoons grated nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon mace

Simmer beef until tender, cool and chop; add sugar, fruits, salt and spices, mix thoroly (as written in the recipe) cook 1 hour, (use two cups for a pie).  Seal in sterilized jars and keep in a cool place.

Memories are the most important thing in any recipe..... tomorrow.