Get grandma's recipes back
In many a kitchen drawer lies a handwritten cookbook – page after page of recipes for kringle, æbleskiver and Christmas goose. But the script is old and Gothic. Upload a photo and get the recipes back onto the kitchen table.
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More than food: the recipe book as a family chronicle
A handwritten cookbook is rarely just a collection of recipes. Between the instructions for brown gravy and Christmas cake hide personal notes, dates of family celebrations, greetings from neighbours and friends, pasted-in newspaper clippings and the occasional little drawing. Some cookbooks follow a family through three or four generations – great-grandmother begins, grandmother adds to it, mother pastes in loose notes. The books are culinary autobiographies: they reveal what the family could afford, which ingredients were available and which celebrations were held. A recipe book from around 1900 tells a different story than one from the post-war years – but both are worth preserving.
Why old recipes are hard to read
Most handwritten cookbooks from before 1900 are written in Gothic handwriting. But the challenge is not only the script: recipes use abbreviations that are never explained, and old measures like pund, lod and pægl that few know today. And because whoever wrote it did so for themselves and not for strangers, crucial steps are often missing – it says »as usual« or »to taste« where today there would be half a page of instructions. A good transcription not only makes the script readable but also helps make the old measures and abbreviations understandable.
Save the family recipes before it's too late
Paper is patient, but not eternal. Grease stains, steam, flour dust and decades of use leave their marks. Many cookbooks have loose pages and smudged ink that make the script even harder. When the last person who could read the old script is no longer here, a piece of living family culture is lost along with the recipes. By having the book deciphered, you secure both the text and a piece of everyday history – and whoever wants to bake grandma's kringle from 1925 finally gets the recipe in readable form.
What you'll find — and what our AI can read
- Gothic handwriting – the common script in cookbooks before 1900
- Abbreviations and old measures – pund, lod and pægl without explanation
- Mixed script – often switching between letterforms on the same page
From old handwriting to readable text
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