Family recipes are lost in a specific way. Not because nobody wrote them down, but because the person who cooked them did not use amounts.

A handful. Until it looks right. A bit of butter. You just know. These are not evasions, they are how somebody cooks after four decades, and they cannot be dictated because the knowledge is in their hands rather than in language.

Which means you cannot get a family recipe by asking for it. You have to watch it being made.

Ask to be shown, not told

“Can you give me the recipe” gets you four lines and no method.

“Can I come and watch you make it, and write it down as we go” gets you the recipe, the method, and about forty minutes of conversation you did not plan for.

This is also, incidentally, the best interview setting in the house. Their hands are busy, there is no eye contact, and nobody is being asked to perform. If you have a relative who will not sit down and talk about their life, cooking is the most reliable side door there is: what to do when a relative will not talk.

Go when they are cooking it anyway. A special demonstration is a performance. A Sunday where you turn up early is not.

Bring scales, and use them without making a fuss

This is the practical heart of it. Weigh what they take.

When they reach for a handful of flour, ask them to drop it into a bowl on the scale before it goes in. When they cut a lump of butter by eye, weigh the lump. When they pour, pour into a measure first.

Do it two or three times per ingredient across the session if you can, and take the middle figure. You are not aiming for laboratory precision. You are converting a handful into something a stranger in another country can reproduce, and any number at all is infinitely better than “a handful”.

Expect mild resistance. It is worth saying plainly, once: “I want to be able to make this when you are not standing next to me.” That is usually the end of the objection.

Also weigh the tin, and measure the pan. Baking recipes are silently dependent on the dish. “Her” loaf tin is part of the recipe and it will not be obvious later.

The things nobody writes down

These are the parts that make a family recipe taste like the family’s, and they are almost never in the written version.

The actual oven. Their oven runs hot or cold, and they have compensated for thirty years without noticing. Ask what number they set it to and note the make if you can.
Timings by sense, not by clock. “Until it smells like biscuits.” “When it stops squeaking.” Write these down exactly as said. They are more useful than minutes.
The order and the resting. What sits, and for how long, and where. Overnight in a cold kitchen is a step.
What they do with their hands. How long they knead, how hard, whether they fold or stir. Describe it as you watch it.
The brand. For some things it genuinely matters, and for others it is superstition, but record it either way. “Always the red tin” is part of the history whether or not it is part of the chemistry.
What can go wrong. Ask directly: “What happens if I get this wrong?” This single question produces the most useful paragraph in most family recipes.
What they changed over the years. Almost every long-cooked recipe has been altered, usually because something stopped being available. That is a story about the decade as much as the dish.

Ask these while they work

The cooking is the occasion. The conversation is the other half of what you came for.

Who taught you this?
Did they write it down, or did you watch?
When did we eat this? Every week, or only for something?
What did the kitchen look like when you first made it?
Did you change anything from how you were taught?
Was there anything you could not get, and what did you use instead?
Who liked it and who did not?
What did your mother make that you never learned?

The last one is worth asking every time. It usually names a dish that is already gone, and occasionally somebody else in the family still knows it.

Record the audio if you sensibly can. A phone propped somewhere away from the noisy end of the kitchen is enough, and hearing them explain the method in their own voice is worth more than your notes: how to record on a phone.

Cook it yourself within a fortnight

This is the step that turns notes into a recipe, and it is the one people skip.

Make it from what you wrote, alone, without asking anything. Every gap will announce itself immediately: the step you did not realise was a step, the consistency you cannot judge, the ten minutes that were actually twenty-five.

Write in the corrections. Then, ideally, make it once more.

A family recipe that has never been cooked from the written version is a set of notes, not a recipe, and the difference only appears when the person who knew is no longer available to ask.

Write it so it can actually be used

Two columns of information, kept separate:

The recipe. Ingredients with weights, in order of use. Method in numbered steps. Oven temperature, tin size, quantity it makes, and the sensory checks in their own words.

The story. Who it came from, when, where it was eaten, what it was for, what changed. A paragraph, not a page.

Keep the story out of the method. Somebody cooking at seven on a Tuesday needs the steps uninterrupted. Somebody reading the family history wants the paragraph. Putting them in separate blocks serves both.

Write the sensory instructions in their exact words, in quotation marks, and add your own translation underneath. “Until it stops squeaking” with “(about 4 minutes, it stops sticking to the spoon)” under it keeps the voice and adds the usable version.

Photograph the right things

Not a styled plate. Photograph:

Their hands doing the difficult step.
What it looks like at the stage that is hard to describe.
The tin, the spoon, the bowl. The specific objects.
The handwritten card, if one exists, exactly as it is, including the stains.

An original handwritten recipe card is a document worth keeping properly rather than transcribing and throwing away: it is handwriting, which is one of the few things that carries a person. How to label and preserve old family photos covers how to store it.

Then give it away

Type it up and send it to everybody in the family who might cook. Print a copy for the person who taught you, which frequently produces corrections and one more story.

A recipe survives by being cooked, not by being archived. Six people with a copy in a kitchen drawer is a far more robust preservation strategy than one perfect document in a folder nobody opens.