Vintage Recipes Are Awesome

A look at a delicious past

Photo by Wendy Rueter on Unsplash

I have yet to find a cookbook I like as much as one my parents have from the 1980s. It was a community cookbook put together by a church as a fundraiser.

All of the recipes were submitted by regular people who cooked or baked using the recipes frequently. The foods were everyday staples; the ingredients are stuff you’d have in your pantry. Many of what I buy without thinking, like baked beans, has a recipe in the book that I can make from scratch. The recipes are unfussy, yet always turn out to be delicious.

I do have a lot of modern cookbooks, but there’s something to be said for simple family recipes passed down for generations. My family didn’t write down a lot of their cooking recipes, so I learned things like chicken pot pie by watching.

But baking is a more precise art. I learned to bake from a young age, and found that a good recipe is essential. I didn’t have access to a lot of ingredients, so simple recipes, like banana bread or pumpkin pie, were my staples. (Incidentally, the best pumpkin pie recipe I’ve found is printed on cans of pumpkin.)

In my opinion, newer recipes posted online just can’t compare. I have had success with a handful of online recipes, and I suspect many of those are tried-and-true family recipes. Taste of Home, for…