The Chowhound folks are discussing secret family recipes, and it's fascinating to peek into other people's lives this way. A lot of special family recipes are not, truth be told, all that special. Does adding ketchup to boxed macaroni and cheese count as "special"? To a lot of people it does, not because it is special in and of itself, but because it's how their family does it.
These little quirks, these special flourishes, are just one of the many ways we signal our allegiance to each other. Food is culture, and a secret recipe is a powerful bond between close family members. Which is to say that even if these recipes aren't very good, they matter in a way that many of the trivial things with which we concern ourselves on a day-to-day basis do not.
My own family recipe is called "Slav Soup." It's a fairly basic broth made from a cooked chicken carcass, plus the usual trio of broth vegetables (celery, carrots, and onion). It is served with big chunks of stewed vegetables and potatoes, with a large quantity of cooked curly egg noodles added just before serving.
Honestly, this soup is not very good. I mean, it's okay, don't get me wrong. But it's hardly the kind of thing you would rush to the stove to make if you tried some.
But here is a fact about this family recipe: I'm a third generation immigrant from Croatia. My branch of the family came to America in the 1920s looking for work. A few years ago some of my family members went back to Croatia to visit the family in the old country.
And when they arrived at the stone house (hand-cut and hand-built; no mortar), what did they find on the stove in the kitchen?
A pot of that very same soup.
Image courtesy Flickr/Mark & Andrea Busse
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