The worst thing I ever baked was my grandmother’s banana bread. I was 20 and a fairly good, though not entirely confident, baker. I followed the recipe—a handwritten script with a list of ingredients and two or three sentences of instructions—but the bread came out rock hard. Had I misread her handwriting? Were my ingredients different from hers? To this day, I don’t know what I did wrong.
Whether it's indecipherable handwriting or insufficient instruction, family recipes can often be difficult to recreate. Add the pressure of making something that's imbued with history and meaning, and even the most assured cook is bound to feel less confident. Some of these come from cookbooks, dog-eared and stained from use; others have been passed down in the kitchen, with the guiding hand of another family member; and many have been carried on in memory alone.
Comments
Post a Comment