Grandma's rolls, the Christmas Eve soup, the potato salad that shows up at every reunion. Send one link, and each person adds their recipe and the story behind it — who made it, when it first showed up on the table. Every recipe comes back as a finished cookbook page, and you print a copy for every household.
Start a family cookbook See a sample cookbookEvery family has the recipes that show up at every gathering, and almost none of them are written down anywhere useful. They live on a stained index card in one kitchen, in a text thread from three Thanksgivings ago, or only in the head of the person who always makes it.
A family cookbook fixes that, and the hard part was never the printing — it was the collecting. Somebody volunteers, emails everyone, and spends two months chasing replies and retyping what comes back. Letting each person add their own recipe changes everything. They open a link, type their recipe (or just photograph the card), tell the story behind it, and see exactly how their page will look before they submit. You never retype a thing.
Families make these for a reunion, as a wedding-shower gift for a new kitchen, as a church or ward cookbook, to gather a grandmother's recipes while she can still tell you the stories, and as a way to keep cooking someone's food after they're gone.
You set it up. Everyone else adds the recipe they're known for.
Name it, add a cover photo, set your categories (Breakfast, Mains, Desserts, or your own), and a deadline so recipes don't drift.
The family group chat, email, the reunion page. There's no account to create, so far more people actually do it.
Each person adds ingredients, steps, a photo and the story, picks where the photo sits, and previews the page. You look over anything before it goes in.
Drag the categories into order, add section pages, and print — one hardcover or one for every household. Everyone gets the free PDF.
A recipe isn't a paragraph. The page knows the difference.
Ingredients in a list with amounts, numbered steps, the story in italics, and "From the kitchen of" at the bottom. It reads like a cookbook because it is one.
Grandma's handwritten card, a clipping, a page from an old church cookbook — snap it with a phone and the ingredients and steps fill in, ready for you to check.
Photo across the top, down the side, or in the corner like a recipe card. The contributor picks; you can change it.
No word limit. A long recipe continues onto a second page, numbered on, and the two pages stay together however the book is reordered.
"Mom made these every Christmas Eve" is what turns a recipe into a family cookbook. Every page has room for it.
A 10-inch square matte hardcover, up to 250 pages. Order one for every household, and split the cost with gifted pages.
"Send me your recipes" gets a handful. A specific ask gets the whole family.
Set up the cookbook and gather recipes at no cost. Pay only when you print.
Create the cookbook, send the link, and collect as many recipes as the family has. Free PDF whenever you want one.
A 10-inch square matte hardcover with matte interior pages, plus shipping. Extra pages are $1.25 each.
Relatives can chip in toward printing — each $1.25 covers one page of the finished cookbook.
They can type them, or photograph a recipe card — handwritten or printed — and the ingredients and steps fill in for them to check. Either way they see a preview of the finished page before they submit.
There's no length limit. A long recipe continues onto a second page, numbered on from where the first page stopped, and the two pages always stay together in the book.
No. A recipe with a photo prints with the dish across the top, down the side, or in the corner — the contributor picks. A recipe without one fills the page with the recipe itself, like a classic cookbook.
Contributors choose a category when they add a recipe — Breakfast, Mains, Desserts and so on — and you can change any of them and drag the categories into order. Recipes can also be sorted by name or by contributor.
Yes. Once the book is finished, any number of copies can be ordered, and everyone can download the free PDF.
Nothing to set up and collect recipes. A 20-page printed hardcover is $34.95, then $1.25 per additional page, plus shipping.
Other books families make together.
Send one link, let everyone add the recipe they're known for, and print the cookbook your family made.
Start a family cookbook