Do the photographing first, and do it this week
Everything else in this guide can wait a year. This cannot. Ballpoint and pencil on index card fade faster than anyone expects, the cards that fade first are the ones handled most, and a single spill takes a recipe out of the world permanently.
Lay every card flat in daylight, photograph front and back, and do not stop to read them. A whole tin is an afternoon. At the end of it nothing is safe yet — a photograph is not a preservation, it is an insurance policy — but the clock has stopped, and everything below can now be done at whatever pace real life allows. The step-by-step version is here.
Then take inventory, before you organise anything
Do not start by buying an app or a binder. Start with a list of where things actually are: the tin, the church cookbook with her three contributions in it, the splattered page in a hardback with notes down the margin, the email from 2011 with the marinade, the recipe your aunt has and nobody else does.
Ask the siblings and the cousins what they hold. A family's collection is almost always scattered across four households, and the version everyone remembers is frequently not the version anyone has written down. You are recording where things live, not fixing them yet.
Capturing the "I just eyeball it" dishes
The most valuable recipes in any family are the least written down, and they have a deadline attached that nothing else in this guide has.
The technique that works is cooking together. Make the dish side by side and write while she works: measure what she pours before it goes in, ask what the dough should feel like rather than what it looks like, and note the things she would never think to say out loud — the pan she always uses, the resting time that is not optional, the "until it smells right". Film a minute of the part your hands cannot copy. One session per dish is usually enough to turn a legend back into a recipe.
Transcribe once, and keep the handwriting beside it
A photograph of slanted cursive is not something anyone can cook from at arm's length over a hot pan, and it is no use at all to a grandchild who cannot read cursive. So each card gets typed up once, in full, with her abbreviations expanded and her margin notes kept as margin notes rather than smoothed into prose.
The image stays attached to the transcription rather than being replaced by it. Nobody frames a transcription. The typed version is what the family cooks from; the card is what makes it hers, and in a printed book the two can face each other on the page.
Write one line of provenance under every title
Not a memoir. One line: "Ann's, from Kraków via Buffalo. Christmas Eve only." Whose it was, where it came from, when it appears.
That sentence is what makes a collection an heirloom instead of a folder. It is also the part that becomes impossible to reconstruct later — the recipe survives on the card, but the reason it matters lives only in whoever remembers it, and this is the one field nobody can fill in for you afterwards.
What to keep it in
A binder is one flood from gone. A notes app is free and genuinely yours, and at a hundred recipes it is the drawer nobody opens. An arrangement that can lapse is a poor fit for a collection that matters more every year it survives.
The test is short and it is worth applying to anything, including us: can you get everything out, whole, in a format that opens with no software from the vendor involved; does it hold photographs of the originals; does it produce something printable; and does it need an account from every relative who wants to read it? The longer version of that checklist is here, and it is deliberately export-first.
Manager or keepsake — decide which you are building
These are two different jobs and most disappointment comes from expecting one tool to do both. A recipe manager is for this week: import a link, plan the dinners, build a shopping list, cook from the phone. A family cookbook is for the next forty years: provenance, handwriting, copies, and an object on a shelf.
There is no contradiction in wanting both, and no reason one program must be both. The honest comparison is here.
Getting the rest in — and what no importer can read
Most food sites publish a clean, machine-readable version of the recipe underneath the advertising, which is why "paste a link" works at all and why the clutter can be left behind. How that actually works is here.
What does not import is exactly the part that matters: cards, photographs, PDFs and screenshots are images, not data, and video-only recipes publish nothing at all. That is not a gap to apologise for. It is the reason a family cookbook is a different project from a recipe folder — the hardest recipe to capture is always the one you most want to keep.
Handing it down
A collection is handed down the way it was built: shared while everybody is still alive to argue about it. Give your brother a copy — a file, or a printed book — rather than an invitation to an account, and it is then his, with nothing to renew and nobody who can lock him out of it.
Four copies of a cookbook in four houses is also the most reliable backup any family has ever managed. Print one. Print two. The bound object is what survives the phone, the format, the company, and eventually all of us.
Common questions
- How do I save recipes from someone who cooks by feel? Cook the dish with them and write while they work. Measure what goes in before it goes in, ask what things should feel like at each stage, and film the tricky part. One session per dish is usually enough.
- What is the best way to preserve handwritten cards? Photograph every card in good daylight now, front and back, then transcribe for daily cooking and keep the image alongside. The handwriting is part of the heirloom; keep both, never one.
- Should a family collection live somewhere that can lapse? It is a mismatch. Collections matter more every year; anything that can expire adds an eviction clause. Whatever you choose, check the export before you trust it with anything.
- Is it legal to keep copies of recipes from websites? Ingredient lists are not copyrightable, and keeping private copies of recipes you cook from is the digital version of the index card. Keep the source with the card, keep it in the family, and do not republish someone's write-up as your own.