Three years ago, my grandmother gave me a stack of recipe
cards, handwritten copies of the hardworking originals which she kept in her
kitchen. She called them "receipts", using an antique word that has
limited currency even in her old-fashioned city of Charleston.
Some are intimately familiar, like split pea soup and
chicken tetrazzini. That soup formed one of my earliest memories, being the
first thing I found gross – green goop that could only be endured for the sake
of manners and a few bits of sausage. Tetrazzini, on the other hand, became the
stuff of dreams. Pasta and cream, baked way beyond al dente, irresistibly easy to
eat. I found the addition of chicken nice, that of mushrooms a nuisance, but
the overriding appeal was the perfectly seasoned combination of carbs and fat –
my first definition of comfort food.
Many more dishes are totally foreign to me. I never saw her
make chicken kiev or ramequins forestières. But buttery spots of grease on
the cards are proof that she did. They offer hints of a life I did not know,
dinners decades before my time, when my grandparents played host to an international
cast of characters. I try to picture the scene: Tokyo, 1956, my grandfather is
an American spy; he invites his contacts and their wives for supper; my
grandmother serves steak Diane and mocha sponge. She will have fed the children
an hour before with meatball stew and ice cream.
Grammy’s culinary repertoire ranged from formal to familial,
drawing inspiration from serious cookbooks and glossy magazines without
prejudice. Her taste was eclectic, unbound by tradition. She had no qualms
about scrapping her beloved macaroni pie in favour of an easier, better mac and
cheese. The front of that card is completely crossed out, with the update on
the reverse. A scrupulous self-editor, she took care to correct commas as well
as quantities. Her style reveals an authorial impulse. She says of brownies,
“These are best slightly underdone, eaten while too hot on paper napkins with
milk at night.” Introducing her beans, “Now this, my dear, is presumption but
sometimes baked beans are called for and I hate a dusty bean pot. I am not
qualified but here goes.” Her words are not directed at me; she wrote the cards
before I was born. She might be addressing one of my aunts, or she might be
speaking to an unknown reader, like a friendly cookery writer chatting affably
to her audience.
There is so much experience and optimism in these receipts,
and the sure confidence that dinner will be delicious. There is no nostalgia. Yet
when I read them, I feel a loss. So I try to recreate her soufflé, wishing that
the eggs would puff according to her instructions, hoping that she would be
pleased.
