Campus News

Alumna writes guide to saving recipes

Preserving Family Recipes
By Valerie J. Frey
University of Georgia Press
Paperback: $26.95

Heirloom dishes and family food traditions are rich sources of nostalgia and provide vivid ways to learn about a family’s past, yet they can be problematic.

Many family recipes and food traditions never are documented in written or photographic form, existing only as unwritten know-how and lore that vanishes when a cook dies.

Preserving Family Recipes is a guide to gathering, adjusting, supplementing and safely preserving family recipes. It also contains tips for interviewing relatives, collecting oral histories and conducting kitchen visits to document family food traditions from the everyday to special occasions. Written by Valerie J. Frey, a UGA alumna and Athens resident, Preserving Family Recipes blends common sense tips with sound archival principles.