Courtesy of Lauren Replogle
When I think of my grandmother, affectionately known as “Mema,” many things come to mind. I think of her frosted silver hair flowing down her back. I think of her eight cats, complimented by her collection of cat decorations nestled up in every corner of her eclectically decorated home. I think of an old mill renovated into her motel on the riverside, the trees decorated with faces. I think of white sprites falling from the cottonwood trees in her backyard. I think of chunky overstated jewelry, with turquoise rings stacked on her fingers and collarbones decorated with buckeye bead necklaces and kaleidoscopic gems rimmed in silver. I think of the way she sits on her porch to feed her “pet” raccoon marshmallows. I think of sewing machines, stitched gifts and garage sale treasures. I think of her unrelenting but gentle ideologies, valuing every creature in every life.
Before all those things, I think of the way she resides in our overstuffed recipe book — adorned with yellowing prints of vegetables and peeling at the corners. When you flip to the “desserts” tab, you will find her.
The recipe most often reached for in my home is her snickerdoodles. The recipe was captured and immortalized on a piece of yellow legal pad in my mother’s cursive script. This recipe is begged for on movie nights, baked in preparation for my Papa’s visits and frequently gifted to those I love in wax paper wrappings adorned with a bow.
Food has always been a vehicle for connection. A family recipe casts a line that weaves through generations, creating a dialogue that long outlasts the inevitability of mortality. There is a certain rite of passage to learning an heirloom dish. Secret ingredients are the gatekeepers to a sense of belonging, a hand extended in invitation and embrace.
Rachel’s Chili
One such recipe is Rachel’s Chili — a recipe belonging to the grandmother of University of Missouri first-year student Stella Robertson. Robertson finds a connection to her grandmother, who grew up during the Great Depression, through the lines tracing her palm.
“She found comfort in the responsibility of cooking and did everything from scratch with her own unique touch because she used her hands instead of cups,” Robertson said. “When she teaches you to cook when you’re a kid, you have to start using the lines on your hands. Your hand size affects how it tastes, so you can tell who made each chili because they all taste different.”
Robertson described making chili in her grandmother’s 1960s time capsule of a kitchen. All original appliances — gas stoves, no dishwasher, piles of spices — all cradled in a room of warm wood and brick.
“It’s all very authentic and feels very homemade,” Robertson said.
This recipe is much more than a bowl of chili to the Robertson family: It is a tie that binds generations.
“Out of anyone I’ve met in my entire life, me and my grandma are on the same wavelength,” Robertson said. “Same jokes, same interests — I’ve never had that with anyone else. So it’s one of those things where when I think of chili, I think of her. Nothing will ever compare to hers in that way.”
Robertson believes that she and her father took after her grandmother the most, and her relationship with him has been strengthened through her grandmother’s recipe.
“When I [cook] with my dad, it makes me feel like we’re on the same wavelength too … It helps bond people,” Robertson said.
Robertson is working to immortalize her grandmother’s work in the lines of her own hands to carry on the recipe for generations to come.
“It’s so hard to replicate her chili because it’s her hands,” Robertson said. “We’ve been making it together for so long because she wants to make sure that once her hands aren’t able to do it anymore, ours can.”
Kimchi JJim (김치찜)
MU exchange student Soomin Hong from Incheon, South Korea, holds a recipe close to her heart that also requires her grandmother’s hands: kimchi jjim.
“In Korea, we call it ‘sonmat (손맛).’ ‘Son’ means hand, ‘mat’ means taste,” Hong said. “We don’t really use recipe books, we only use our hands. My family’s kimchi requires my grandma’s sonmat.”
Kimchi jjim is a recipe that consists of braised kimchi and pork butt, usually served over rice. In Korean families, it is customary to have a family kimchi recipe, so no family’s kimchi jjim will ever taste the same.
“I ate kimchi jjim when I was studying and doing things for school,” Hong said. “I lived with my grandma in middle school and high school, and when I graduated, we split. Kimchi jjim was me and my sister’s ‘let’s go’ food. We see my grandmother once or twice a week now. Every time I go over, she remembers that my favorite food is kimchi jjim and she makes it. She really remembers what I love and she wants to serve what I love, so I feel my grandma’s affection when I think about kimchi jjim.”
Hong wants to hold this comfort and warmth that her grandmother’s kimchi jjim provides her for the rest of her life. To do that, she needs to learn her grandmother’s sonmat.
“I want to learn it because when she passes away, I will need the recipe so much,” Hong said. “I want to learn it so that when I make it, I can be reminded of all of my memories with her.”
Grandma Appleby’s Spaghetti and Meatballs
According to MU first-year student Ellie Hubbard, the prized recipe in the Appleby family is her late Grandma Appleby’s spaghetti and meatballs. This recipe also spans generations, originally coming from Ellie’s great-grandmother. Now that her grandmother has passed, her family is dedicated to reviving and perfecting the recipe in her memory.
“My grandma passed away in 2021 and the recipe died with her,” Hubbard said. “We have the recipe, but we just can’t recreate it.”
Resurrecting a family recipe is a delicate task. Sometimes you can’t recreate the original chef’s culinary essence, unable to capture each fine detail that makes the recipe uniquely theirs.
Regardless, the Appleby family doesn’t relent, revisiting a florally adorned index card and examining the familiar cramped, slanted cursive script.
When Hubbard recalls many family dinners enjoying this meal with loved ones, she is reminded of her grandmother’s gentle patience.
“My grandma had this nice long dining room table, it was perfect wood — but then there would be these covers on top and then a white tablecloth,” Hubbard said. “I would set the table. I learned how to set the table pretty young because that’s what I would do to help and contribute. We would all sit around and eat, and eventually, someone would spill onto this nice white tablecloth. But my grandmother would just laugh and say, ‘just put it in the washing machine.’”
What an honor it is to have a pristine tablecloth stained by loved ones enjoying a meal cooked with tender care.
Nowadays, when I cook my Mema’s snickerdoodles, I add my own touch: adding pumpkin spice to the cinnamon-sugar mix and sprinkling a bit of sea salt on top of the cookies when fresh out of the oven.
The lifespan of a recipe as it is passed from person to person closely mirrors our own shifting and ever-changing identities — altered by every person we encounter. A recipe is complex and moldable, never really a finished product.
We ourselves can find the fingerprints of every “chef” who has pored over our intricacies and molded us along the way.
Edited by Molly Levine | mlevine@themaneater.com
Copy edited by Claire Bauer and Natalie Kientzy | nkientzy@themaneater.com
Edited by Emily Skidmore | eskidmore@themaneater.com