No Googled recipe as dear as my aunt's

I had a weekend craving for a meal I hadn’t eaten for at least 20 years, so I texted three people who I thought might have the recipe written down. 

One replied immediately that she did, and that she’d “just have to find it.” 

A few minutes later, a photo arrived of what was clearly a much-used recipe, handwritten on a stained piece of note paper, which had been folded and unfolded so often that it was almost in pieces. 

It set me to thinking. 

Like many of us, I get a lot of recipes off the internet. It’s darned easy to look up something like “best baked salmon” or “easiest queso” and try out a new concoction. 

Plenty of folks wouldn’t even consider owning a cookbook or a recipe box anymore. 

Why would they, with an ocean of resources in cyberspace available at the tap of a keyboard? 

It was seeing that photo of a beloved handwritten recipe that made me think about what is missing from that overwhelming virtual collection. 

It’s the grubby fingerprints, the penciled-in notes, the love. 

For fun, I Googled “pancake recipe,” and within .67 seconds (their timer, not mine), I was presented with “about 269,000,000 results” (their count, not mine). 

But not one of those 269 million recipes could possibly be as precious as the lined page I have that was torn by my father from an old stenographer’s pad after he wrote down for me his method for making pancakes. 

I treasure his scrawling handwriting and ever-creative spelling as he instructs me to “add flower to make a thin batter … a little sugar, if you like it, makes them brown nicer when cooked — also more callerys.” (One has to stay on guard against those dreaded “callerys.”)  

None of the 74,200,000 recipes Google rounded up in .85 seconds for lasagne (seriously, how is that possible?) could be as dear to me as my Aunt Katie’s version penned on a yellowed index card with the upper left-hand corner worn away from being retrieved so many times from the recipe box. 

That card is splattered with tomato sauce and marked with her notes informing me that this recipe came from her friend, Barbara, “an Italian,” and that it’s “very good” and I should “freeze half to have another time.” 

I ended up typing out the recipe I received this weekend from my sister-in-law’s mother — mini meat loaves … delicious — then I printed it out and laid it on the counter as I cooked.  

I may have deliberately been a little bit messy as I mixed up the ingredients, browned the beef, and ladled sauce over the top. 

Maybe, just maybe, I added the first of many smudges to that sheet of paper. 

Maybe, just maybe, someone will see that page in a generation or two or three and instinctively know — by the tatters and splatters and stains and smudges — that they’d better head to the store and gather the ingredients for this one. 

Because clearly, it’s a keeper. 

Betty Williamson knows the best recipes are found on the wrinkled pages. Reach her at: [email protected]