Behold! This is my all time favorite mystery found recipe. Granted, a large part of the mystery is that much of baking knowledge of my elders is presumed lost.
This discovery comes from the ongoing project to digitize all of the family recipes and notecards that we have been assembling over the years. Here we see a low light image of a photocopy of a handwritten recipe from many moons ago.
The handwriting is a bit hard to read on this photocopy in a few places. Mom and I took our best guesses in the instructions section when the project first started in 2020. According to Mom, this is from a family friend’s mother or maybe even her grandmother. It is clear that the primary document is a short letter (that happens to have 2/3 of a recipe in it) written to our friend Barb in 1965.
Then my mom photocopied it a few decades later and put it into the recipe notebook.
And then I went to type the whole thing up a few decades after that.
Naturally, some of the instructions and assumptions have been lost in translation. I’ll do my best to add editorial notes as we go along.
Original Source: Barb’s Grandmother, Found recipes. This is a photocopy of an old, handwritten page that was signed “Mary, 1965, Dec.”
Ingredients:
2 cups Sugar
1 cup Crisco or other Shortening
3 Eggs
1 cup heavy Sour Cream
1 teaspoon {Baking} Soda
1/2 teaspoon Salt
1 teaspoon Baking Powder
3 cups or more of {AP} Flour
1 cup {of Flour?} on the board to roll
Vanilla and Almond Flavoring
Instructions, or rather the narrative list as line items that may or may not be relevant:
- Beat the sugar, shortening, and eggs together.
- {Someone’s name, maybe?}, is so hard to say {about} the flour. Sometimes you will need more {depending} on the {eggs?} and the cream.
- Only experience can help.
- I expect I’ll take some to Scottsbluff for Christmas.
No other information is given for how to combine, then bake the remainder of the ingredients. In discussing this recipe with my mom, she states that it was often just a given that most people knew how to make sugar cookies, so no further baking instruction was needed.
When I test bake this I’ll add my best guess at the remainder of the instructions and report back my findings.
Makes:
Your guess is as good (if not better) than mine.
More photos and information updates will be incoming as I start my test kitchen back up in the new year. Thanks for joining me on this journey.
