The Family Recipes That I Never Inherited

Reflecting on how I have so many food memories, but no family recipes to pass down to my children.

I see lots of food blogs that reference family recipes such as Grandma’s tomato sauce, or Mum’s chocolate chip cookies and I am incredibly jealous. I have a lot of food memories - from childhood through to today - but I don’t have a single family recipe passed down to me from the generations before.

What’s interesting about this is that my grandparents were great cooks. Particularly on my mother’s side. I remember going to their house at the weekend and there being freshly baked bread (from my Grandad), with cakes and a Sunday roast (from my Nana).

However, I don’t remember my Mum and Dad ever teaching me to cook something. I also don’t remember them cooking anything that they learned from their parents either. So where did all of the family recipes disappear to, and how do I get them back?

Our household was never short of food when I was growing up. There was possibly a money and class element to the food we ate, but it wasn’t the main contributing factor. We never went without or went hungry. In reality we ate a pretty standard diet for the time - with most of it coming from the freezer, or from tins.

Convenience food was aspirational. The microwave was king - pushed by supermarket advertising for ready meals and microwave cook books. One of the big advantages for the ready meal, is that you no longer need the recipe - and you no longer need to learn the technique. Why learn to make a bechamel when you can buy the entire lasagne, already packaged and ready to cook?

If recipes did survive, then they had been morphed to fit the times. I distinctly remember my Mum having a book that talked you through cooking an entire Sunday roast in the microwave. Another time my Dad decided to use the “grill” function to make toast, and spent about 10 times the effort he would have done using the toaster across the room.

What was really revolutionary was that we could all have something different for tea. Tikka Masala for my Dad, Shepherds Pie for Mum and a corned beef hash for me. With the added benefit that everyone can just cook your own meal - no hot ovens to worry about, no schedules to constrain us. This meant eating on your lap in front of the TV at whatever time suited. No sitting at the table, no shared experience. Nobody had to explain to me how to make anything.

There was still one exception -- Sundays. The Sunday roast is a British tradition and it was no different in our house. Luckily my Mum did resist the urge to cook the entire thing in the microwave, but the odd Aunt Bessie’s Yorkshire pudding would slip in. I want you to bear in mind that we grew up in Yorkshire - with great uncles and aunties who were farmers and cooks. So, why couldn’t we make a Yorkshire pudding ourselves?

We didn’t always have Sunday roast at home. We would often visit our grandparents as well. I’d go to the pub with my Dad and Granddad (I’m about 9 in this story) while my cousins Leanne, Suzanne and Laura would stay behind and help with the cooking. Then we would all sit together as an extended family and eat . This is exactly what people aspire to when they think of family meal gatherings, but it was infrequent and only when my grandparents initiated it.

I don’t want to set the picture here that my parents were lazy, or that they did a bad job - they were victims of the food environment that they lived in. Added to that, they both worked and time was a premium. Ultra processed food was new and aspirational and was being pushed hard by the supermarkets.

I distinctly remember the launch of new breakfast bars (Nutri Grain) and the excitement it caused. It was a healthy breakfast, backed by science. Except, that it wasn’t really. There’s a lot of public awareness around ultra-processed food today, but that just didn’t exist then. Parents were largely defenceless against this sort of advertising.

At school it wasn’t much different. Most school meals consisted of chips, sausages and burgers - with pink custard and sponge for dessert (a culinary masterpiece)! That’s the food my entire generation was eating up and down the country as school cooks were being replaced with ready made food shipped in from outside. Even our school cooks were becoming de-skilled.

My wife also has the same experience, with her parents cooking confidence eroded in the same way though lack of practice. I remember her once telling me that she was nostalgic for a Shepherd’s pie, but when I made it she wondered where all of the tinned goods were - why were there no baked beans in there?!?

It would be disingenuous of me to say that I never ate fresh food or meals cooked from scratch. My Dad could make a good spaghetti bolognaise and chilli-con-carne and my Mum could put together a fantastic Sunday roast. The chip pan also got numerous outings - despite the constant public safety videos about their use. On top of that we ate out at pubs (though never restaurants) fairly frequently and had the usual guilty pleasures of a “Chippy Tea” or pizza takeaway.

So - is that the end of traditions? The 90s food culture has destroyed my links to the past? I don’t think so. I still have the memories of my favourite foods from childhood and, much to my wife’s disdain, a tin of ravioli can take me right back.

I would like to reset with my children though. My 6 month old is currently weaning and he is experiencing foods that I could only dream of as a child. His favourite is Avocado - a food I don’t think I came across until I was in my 20s. When he’s older I’ll teach him the recipes that I have learned. Unfortunately, they just won’t come from his Nana - they’ll come from Blumenthal, Ramsay, Stein and Ottolenghi.

My hope is that in two generations, my family will cook my Yorkshire pudding recipe. They’ll get into an argument about how long it sits out for, and how long to heat the oven - maybe they’ll come back to say “that’s how your great grandad did it”. Except they won’t know that I just got my recipe from Delia Smith!

And I think there is some hope for home cooking and food culture in the UK. The Air Fryer (which is in danger of becoming the new microwave) seems to have inspired a new found love of cooking in my parents. Every time I see them I get another tip for something I can air fry. It’s nice to see them excited about food - because it’s now an important part of my life as well. Maybe alongside Delia’s Yorkshire pudding recipe, I can pass along my Dad’s method for air frying a pork chop (because it’s actually, really really good!)