What does adopting new-to-you methods of recipe preservation look like, especially when you didn’t grow up with an abundance of recipe cards or cookbooks (beyond culinary textbooks)? How do you package shared recipes and memories for travel? Or as Amanda Elise Herbert and Annette Elise Herbert ask in “Golden State: Recipes and Memory,” “How do recipes make memories?” Recipe cards are one way.
In 2021, shortly before Jedidiah, my oldest child (and the first to leave home), went off to college in New York, I designed a personal recipe collection of eight cards, interspersed with seven photos of her siblings, her father, and me. Usability was top of mind for me – the cards had to withstand wear and tear in what I hoped would be frequent use. Though I didn’t have personal experiences with handwritten recipes on paper, I’d seen photos of many online with ink blotted by splashes of soups and stews. I decided to type up the recipes because they were long, I didn’t think I could fit each handwritten recipe on a singular card, and I didn’t have the strength to write all eight of them by hard, so I opted to go digital for this part, along with the design in Canva, then proceeded to my local print store where I had them printed in 5 X 7 inch dimensions, and then laminated. They went into a surprise gift box along with spices which she opened in her apartment-style dorm room (complete with a shared kitchen), on her first night at school in New York. She loved them.
Recipe cards are time capsules, holding nostalgic space for recipes as heirlooms. In “Preserving Family Recipes,” archivist Mary Lynn Ritzenthaler says “They evoke wonderful memories and keep traditions alive,” like our frequent family taco nights with tomato salsa, a recipe in the collection. Jedidiah shared that she “made salsa, maybe twice or three times – in my first year, when I had one of my dinner parties and then I think after that I made it again. It tasted just like yours and that surprised me.” I was thrilled. This is what I’d hoped for, that she would create new memories, while honoring traditions, perhaps of taco nights with corn tortillas, pickled onions, guacamole, with the tomato salsa at the centre, like we did at home.
For Jedidiah’s collection, I used favorites from various sources which spanned a 30-year period, from my time at university in the UK in the late 1990s, to recipes gifted by friends when we lived in the Netherlands in the late 2000s, and ones inspired by our favorite TV show, Masterchef Australia. Some recipes reflected our cultural identity as Nigerians (Pepper Sauce, Nigerian Stew, Jollof Rice), others were family favorites (Banana Bread, Tomato Salsa, Zucchini with Lemon and Mint), and I also included a few I thought she’d love (Masala Chai, Tomato Salad). While most of the recipes were accessible to her via my Kitchen Butterfly food blog, I wanted to create something physical–a touchstone–, of home, as she laid down new roots in New York.

Four years later in August 2025, on Jedidiah’s return home with cards, certificate, and a wealth of cooking practice, I sat down with her, curious about her experience with the cards particularly after examining them. What did she think of the cards when she first opened the box? “I was touched”. In response to my questions on whether she felt like she needed the recipes, she said she found them convenient: “They were handy, I didn’t have to search (for them online), and if I needed a recipe, I could just take them to the kitchen with me, and I didn’t need my phone, and I also liked that I didn’t have to prop them open like a cookbook. And they were protected because you laminated them.” Music to my ears. Of the lamination, she shared, “I hadn’t seen anything laminated in years, and it took me back to my (secondary) school days.”
Three cards looked well used, with spots and splatters–Pepper Sauce, Banana Bread, and Tomato Salsa–while the others were virtually untouched. “At some point,” Jedidiah explained, “I separated them in my drawer.” She’d put away those she didn’t use as much in the back of her drawer, reserving space in front for those she called on time and time again.
On Banana Bread: “I used it because baking is more precise.” When asked what I could have done differently, she shared that “It would have been nice to have space to make notes, like I don’t really like bananas so I use less in my banana bread, and I also reduce the sugar.” She would have liked to note those on the card so that she’d be reminded for future bakes. It reminded me of a comment in “Recipes, Index Cards and Paper Slips” where Elaine Leong writes “The index card provides note-takers with a flexible and extendable system”. And while my cards are similar to index cards, I’d not thought far enough to see them as adaptable.
My conversation with Jedidiah about the cards made me reflect on the article, “When a Recipe Was a ‘Receipt’.” It rightly highlights instruction and record keeping as essential elements of both the modern recipe, and its predecessor, the receipt. There is reciprocity with recipes, in many ways. When I gifted them to Jedidiah, I didn’t think of a future in which I’d reflect on them, many years on, or get her perspective. In the end, these recipes travelled and returned home with their steward in one piece, albeit a touch tomato-stew stained.
Recipe cards can do and be many things. They can be practical references, useful in recreating dishes, drinks and more, relics with anthropological value, and expressions of love and legacy. I’m glad I explored this format–and thrilled I got to reflect on it here–of written heritage, making memories built on shared identity while creating new traditions, across geographies.
Ozoz Sokoh is an ex-exploration geologist, food and tourism studies educator, and author of Chop Chop: Cooking the Food of Nigeria (2025), the definitive guide to Nigerian cuisine drawn from over a decade of unearthing and preserving Nigerian culinary tradition. She researches, and interrogates connected foodways across the world, highlighting similarities between popular and little-known cultures and cuisines.
Her ongoing project, “Coast to Coast: From West Africa to the World” traces the histories and edible trails of West Africa and its diaspora through ingredients and “commodities” and is documented on Feast Afrique. It includes an open-access digital library of 250+ Black culinary resources, from the 1800s to date, a hall of fame, data-driven work on the role of food media in marginalizing West African voices, and a series of short films available for screening.
She makes her home on Land of the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation in Ontario, Canada. Ozoz has spoken at TEDx and at conferences hosted by the Culinary Institute of America. Her work has been featured in Smithsonian Magazine, Gastro Obscura, CNN African Voices, Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown, and more.












