How to make a family cookbook for the holidays
Every holiday someone asks the same question: who has the recipe for Mom’s stuffing? This year, answer it for good. A family cookbook gathers the recipes everyone loves, in the handwriting of the people who made them, so they are ready for every table from now on. Here is a plan that fits into the weeks before the holidays.
Give yourself a deadline
Recipes trickle in slowly, so start early and set dates. Thanksgiving 2026 is Thursday, November 26, and the holiday season runs through New Year’s Day. Here is a plan that spreads the work across the season:
| By | Do this |
|---|---|
| November 1 | Ask the family for recipes |
| November 8 | Collect the cards and photos |
| November 15 | Photograph and add every recipe |
| November 26 | Thanksgiving: cook from it, and collect the stories at the table |
| December 15 | Print copies and share links for holiday gatherings and gifts |
| January 1, 2027 | Start the new year with the family cookbook finished |
Starting later? Any recipe saved before the new year is one that won’t be lost.
Ask the family
One message to the family group chat gets things moving. Ask for photos rather than the cards themselves, so nobody has to part with an original. Something like:
“I’m putting together a family cookbook for the holidays. Could you send me a photo of any family recipe you have, front and back, and tell me who made it and when it was served? The handwritten ones are the best.”
Follow up with the people who cook the most. They often have the recipes nobody else thought to ask for.
Choose what goes in
- The holiday staples: the dishes that have to be on the table.
- Everyday favorites people still ask for.
- The recipes only one person ever made. These are the ones most at risk of being lost.
- At least one recipe from each branch of the family, so everyone sees their own people in it.
Capture each recipe
Photograph every card front and back in good daylight. Old cards often finish on the back, like our own Sauerbraten card pictured above, which runs out at “or until”. Then add each photo to feedme.recipes. It reads the handwriting and lays it out as ingredients and steps for you to check. The original photo stays with the recipe, so the handwriting is part of the cookbook too.
Put everything in one collection called “Family Cookbook” so the whole book is in one place. Recipes from websites can go in too: paste the link and it is saved without the ads.
Add the stories
A cookbook becomes a family cookbook when it has the stories. For each recipe, add a line or two: who made it, when it was served, and what people remember about it. “Aunt Ruth made this every Easter and never measured the cinnamon” is worth as much as the recipe itself.
Test the tricky ones
Old cards skip steps and use terms like “moderate oven” or “butter the size of an egg”. Our guide to preserving Grandma’s recipe cards has a table of what those old terms mean today. If a recipe looks incomplete, make it once before the holiday and write down what you had to guess.
Share it with everyone
- Send a link. Any recipe you added yourself can be shared, and anyone with the link can see it and save it to their own collection.
- Print it. Print a clean copy of each recipe, slide the pages into sheet protectors and put them in a binder. It makes a wonderful gift.
- Bring it to the table. Open a recipe in Cook mode on a tablet while you cook. It shows one step at a time in large type.
Make it a tradition
A family cookbook is never finished. Add one new recipe every holiday: a dish someone brought for the first time, or a recipe a new member of the family shared. In a few years you will have a record of your family’s table that no store-bought cookbook can match.