Many of us have a favourite dish prepared by our grandparents or parents, but what happens to those recipes when they are no longer around to make them?
A new Portuguese app developed by the University of Coimbra wants to make sure that traditional family recipes, together with the memories behind them, are not lost over time.
The application, called Family Food Heritage (FFH), allows users to save recipes, photographs, documents and personal stories connected to their family's cooking traditions.
As reported by Executive Digest on 16 October, World Food Day, the idea is not simply to create another digital cookbook, but to help families preserve recipes that have been passed down through generations, often without ever being written down.
One of the interesting features is that users can record who originally taught them a recipe and how they learned to prepare it. This could have been through written instructions, watching a family member cook, or simply learning from them over the years.
The app also allows people to connect recipes to particular family members and places, adding more personal information about the history of each dish.
There is even a memorial feature where users can include relatives who have passed away, making it possible to preserve their cooking knowledge and the recipes they used to prepare.
Old handwritten recipes can be saved
Another useful feature is the possibility of turning old handwritten recipes into digital versions.
Using artificial intelligence, the app can recognise text from photographs of handwritten recipe books or individual pages.
Users simply take a photograph of a recipe, and the application extracts the text. They can then check the information, correct any mistakes and add photographs or memories connected to the dish.
This could be particularly useful for families who still have old notebooks filled with recipes written by their grandparents or other relatives.
Carmen Soares, a researcher and scientific coordinator at the Centre for Classical and Humanistic Studies at the University of Coimbra's Faculty of Arts and Humanities, explained that our food preferences and many of the dishes we prepare today come from what previous generations taught us.
She also pointed out that keeping these traditions alive is not only about remembering the past. Recipes often change as they are passed from one generation to another, with each family member adding something of their own.
The application already brings together families from several countries, including Portugal, Brazil and Norway, allowing users to record how their traditional dishes and cooking habits have changed over time.
A European project led by Coimbra
Family Food Heritage was developed as part of CONVIVIUM – New European Bauhaus Solutions in Food, Living Heritage and Conviviality, a European project coordinated by the University of Coimbra.
The project involves 20 institutions from seven European countries and focuses on food, cultural traditions and the importance of preserving knowledge connected to everyday life.
Members of the public were also involved in developing the application, helping researchers understand which features would be most useful for recording family food traditions.
The app is available for both iPhone and Android devices.
For anyone who has ever wished they had written down a grandparent's favourite recipe, the application offers a way to keep those instructions and memories together in one place, ready to be shared with future generations.