Capturing Grandma’s Recipes

My Grandmother Dodge – my mother’s mother – served a taste sensation that I have been trying to recreate. It was a pie unlike anything I’ve seen or tasted since: A flaky one-crust pie with a thin layer of a cream filling that was overwhelming in its sweet vanilla flavor. It just worked, and it’s haunted my taste buds for more than 60 years.

It’s not the only lost recipe. My father’s mother, Isabelle or Belle as she was known by her contemporaries, had a date nut cookie recipe that was revered by her grandchildren and great-grandchildren. But it was not recorded. I also enjoyed her roast beef that included tomatoes – stewed tomatoes, I believe. She was one of those cooks who didn’t measure ingredients but could go by her own estimates and taste buds. That’s why few of her recipes were recorded.

What’s with the chemistry that drives our yearning for the dishes that our grandmothers made or are part of our family food history? Whatever taste combination might have triggered the synapses in our younger brains must have been powerful to allow that memory to remain, and for it to maintain domain over all the other meals consumed since in our daily lives. In remembering that flavor, what are we really after?

On a quest to recreate the lost recipe

I recently decided to try to recapture one of those lost dishes — Bess Dodge’s pie. I suspect I ate it only half dozen times, but it made a huge impression. Alas, Grandma Dodge died in the mid-1950s when I was only 11.  But no recipe exists. No card, no cookbook, nothing. My mother doesn’t have the recipe, nor do any of her three sisters, all of them now in their 90s. My grandmother often cooked alone, and her daughters were tasked with other chores. Nor have I been able to find another family member who could provide a hint. No relatives even remember for sure what we called the pie.

Once on the quest of recreating the taste, I’ve perused cookbooks in search of recipe clues. I’ve learned about a class of pies called vanilla sugar pie or a vanilla buttermilk pie. Even former Vice President Dan Quayle has a recipe for Indiana Sugar Cream Pie on Pinterest. That pie, also called Hoosier Pie, is suspected to have origins in Amish and Shaker communities in Indiana, where it is the official state pie. It’s sometimes referred to as Finger Pie because of the method used to mix the ingredients. I tried it.  Close, but no cigar.

Help from my mother

So, with my mother’s recollections of look and ingredients, I began my attempts to recreate that visual and taste memory. Liquid: evaporated milk. Flavorings: only vanilla, no cinnamon. Butter? My grandmother would not have had butter to use. Cook the filling in the pie shell or on top of the stove and then pour into the filling into the baked shell? Bake it in the shell.

Recently, I came across a recipe for Water Pie, which was described as a Depression-era concoction. I thought that might be a possibility or might offer clues to a more favorable result. It was popular during the Depression and consisted of some of the same ingredients. I gave it a shot.  Alas, though an intriguing result, it wasn’t the answer.

The last time my mother visited, we tried creating Grandma Dodge’s Pie from my research. She said we were pretty close. I’ll take that. And while I might continue an occasional experiment if some new idea comes along, I like what I’ve managed to create. And so does Mrs. Farmboy.

The moral of the story: but sure to capture those treasured family recipes while you can! How about you? Have you recorded all the family favorites? What’s your favorite Grandma’s recipe?