Start with the family recipes guide if you want the whole of it in one place. The pieces below go deeper on one question each.
§ VIII — Guides
The box, and the afternoon
that saves it.
Writing from the people building Heirloom: how to get a family's recipes out of a tin before the tin is being sorted through, what to look for in something you intend to keep for forty years, where a recipe manager ends and a keepsake begins, and why the one card that matters most is the one no importer can read.
- How to save family recipes before they're lostRecipes do not disappear dramatically; they fade. Take inventory, cook the unwritten dishes alongside their cook, photograph every card this week, and write one line of provenance under each.2026
- What to look for in a recipe keeper you intend to keepA collection that matters more every year is a bad fit for an arrangement that can lapse. The six things to check before you trust anything with your grandmother's handwriting — export first.2026
- Recipe manager or keepsake? They are different jobsThe good recipe managers are built around one cook, this week's dinners, and a shopping list. A family cookbook is built around provenance, copies and a printed object. Honest about which you need.2026
- What a recipe importer can and cannot readMost food sites publish a clean machine-readable recipe under the ads, which is why "paste a link" works at all. The handwritten card publishes nothing — and that is the card that matters.2026