Kitchen and tableNo. 23
A family cookbook
the recipe box, the stories behind it and an index of the family who cooked it
Every family has a recipe box that only one person can read. The cards say “a coffee cup of flour” and “bake till done”, the best ones have no card at all, and the stories that made them matter — whose wedding, which winter — live in the heads of people who will not always be here to ask.
This recipe turns the box into a cookbook. You photograph the cards and hand them to the assistant you already use, Claude, ChatGPT or another you connect to know.sh, and it files the whole box in an evening: each chapter a research document, each recipe a numbered finding with the same four parts: the story, the ingredients, the method, and what the card does not say. Then you sit down with the cards and correct it in the editor. know.sh builds an index at the back from the names that recur, so Rose, Walt and Aunt Jo each lead to the recipes they made, and Look up finds every recipe with buttermilk in it. When a chapter is ready, a read-only link lets the whole family read it on a phone at the stove.
- 1Make the shelf and the chapters
- 2Photograph the box and hand it to your assistant
- 3Give every recipe the same four parts
- 4Ask your assistant what the cards leave out
- 5Standardise without erasing
Read the recipeseven steps, about 7 min to read