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FEATURE

friends, kept them a kindred and connected clan, no matter how distant they actually were geographically from each other. And each family’s recipe collection was like a colony of information, handed down, passed around, literally shared by countless home cooks. In our family, every offspring possesses a recipe file, and each file contains a photocopied version of a Lorelle classic — my grandmother’s tossed-off “process document” for frying oysters. To call it a recipe would be a stretch, as it starts off with “crack eggs in blue bowl” (we all know

I consider Carla Noël Hebert Prescott, my mother’s youngest sister, to be our family’s most organized archivist, and the glue that nowadays holds our recipe collection together. Still residing in Baton Rouge and a grandmother herself, she lived her life as a dedicated family documentarian, fantastic photographer and always the first to “put things into the computer.” Her personal recipe file contains our family’s culinary heirlooms as well as interesting dishes from her travels and her weekly Po-Ke-No circle. I knew my best bet for putting my hands on Mamma’s mayo recipe would be to contact Noël. After a 20-minute catch-up conversation — the bare minimum for an Hebert phone call — I got the mayonnaise recipe and some new stories about her grandkids, but most of all, I felt once again a solid connection to three generations of Hebert women. Mamma’s Homemade Mayonnaise WHAT YOU WILL NEED 1 egg 1 teaspoon prepared yellow mustard 1 teaspoon sugar Salt, to taste Cayenne pepper, to taste Juice of one small lemon Oil, usually vegetable oil, about 11 to 2 cups HOW TO PREP In a small mixing bowl with an electric mixer, combine egg, mustard, sugar, salt (about 1 teaspoon), lemon juice and a dash of cay- enne pepper at low speed. Raise speed to high and slowly drizzle in oil, mixing until mayonnaise thickens to desired consistency. I don’t recommend getting it too thick — not as thick as bought mayonnaise — because I find it will separate more quickly in the icebox. (It is a trial-and-error process that you will soon learn.) Taste to see if more salt is needed after mix- ing, and adjust as needed. This works in a blender or food processor as well, but I find that a Mixmaster yields a better consistency. Note to the reader: This is more of a his- torical document than scientific formulation. It’s Lorelle’s and in her own words. Measure- ments reflect her use of standard tea spoons instead of fancy measuring spoons, so your mileage may vary. In Mamma’s kitchen, it was “all to taste” anyway...

the one) and ends with “You’re on your own” (which is true too — or is it? I never feel alone when I’m cooking a recipe handed down from Lorelle or Marguerite or one of the aunts). Leafing through page after page, I can’t help but marvel at the sheer tonnage of family history contained in that recipe file. Names of forgotten family friends, my mother’s handwritten notes and grocery lists. Long recipes copied by my cousins as fourth- grade handwriting practice.The most-loved recipes — the true classics from our home — were in the roughest shape. They were the ones with the least detail, often little more than ingredient lists scribbled on envelopes, pay stubs or bank deposit slips. You could tell they were the best-loved because Mama’s writing was faded and barely legible from constant use, the pages held together by kitchen spills and memory. After a few hours digging through the recipe file, I still couldn’t find my grandmother Lorelle’s mayonnaise recipe, and decided to do the most efficient thing: I’d just call Noël.

have to be the hundreds of hand-written recipes from family members, friends and coworkers. Most come from the era when students competed for Best Penmanship awards, and since many of Mama’s people were schoolteachers, their perfect cursive can just take my breath away. The handwritten formulas are the ones that make me the most nostalgic — seeing the different flourishing scripts of my grandmother, all my aunts and my mother is like hearing familiar voices, each distinct and instantly recognizable. I can tell the subtle differences between the longhand of my aunts Lula Mae Hebert Prides (homemade ice cream) and Barbara Hebert Willis (pancakes). The six Hebert sisters maintained a constant flow of letters and kitchen communication, even as some raised their own families far from Baton Rouge. But their recipes, shared freely among the aunts and other family members and close

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