Just like mom used to make

CAMBRIDGE -- Before Kaki Trimble loaned out her book of family recipes, she removed two: Bourbon balls, chocolate-covered candies that her mother makes every Christmas, and a family friend's 22-step mint julep recipe, which Trimble always serves at her annual Kentucky Derby party. Those stay in the family.

Almost every recipe remaining in the book is a tried-and-true dish that friends and relatives have been making for years. Red-eye gravy, the coffee-based sauce that's served with country ham, is included, as is burgoo, a meat stew from her father's home state of Kentucky. There's pickled chicken from Trimble's paternal grandmother and pie crust from her mom's mom, an Indiana farm wife whose specialty is pie, although Trimble swears she's never actually seen her make one. Trimble, 29, who lives in Inman Square, is now known among friends for her own pies. Her favorite is apple-cranberry. She always uses her grandmother's crust recipe, with her own variation: She replaces the shortening with butter.

Trimble is one of many people who have learned how to cook from their parents and grandparents. The way she thinks about food, the techniques she uses, and the way she goes about her kitchen tasks are all rooted in how her family did things. For modern cooks, the little tricks picked up here and there -- like saving parsley stems and onion trimmings for soup stock, or using kitchen shears to butcher a chicken -- gird their kitchen routine. Hand-me-down treasures such as pie crust and bourbon balls are integral parts of their repertoire, memories and all. Techniques and recipes are passed down, copied, and adapted. It's part of the process by which home cooking is created.

Sometimes it's inevitable that recipes get altered a little. Junior Portal, who moved to the United States from Caracas 10 years ago, brought his grandmother's way of cooking with him. ''She was from the Andean countryside, and when she came to visit us in the city, she brought her own herbs and spices with her," Portal says. ''She made delicious meals out of nothing -- stews and soups, rice dishes like paella -- and I always tried to imitate her food."

As the general manager of Betty's Wok & Noodle Diner, near Symphony Hall, Portal, 40, is in charge of lunch and dessert menus, where his grandmother's quesillo, a dessert that's ''somewhere between a flan and a custard," is featured. ''Hers was very simple, just eggs, milk, sugar. Whip it, bake it. I added coconut and coconut milk," he says, and the result is a not-too-sweet, slightly nutty confection that complements the fusion menu.

At home in Cambridge, Julie Vulliez, 35, cooks mostly by feel. ''Stuffing and meatballs are the only recipes of my mom's I've copied and carried on," she says. She learned how to cook by hanging around the kitchen and watching her Italian mother. ''I'm not afraid of the kitchen," says Vulliez. ''I don't need to measure. I just go for it."

Vulliez uses her accrued knowledge cooking regularly for herself. She's trying to be ''more nutrition-conscious," she says, so her mother's meatballs ''are more of an occasion thing." She notes that the key is white bread, soaked in water before it's added to the meat. The bread and meat are mixed with garlic and spices, formed into large balls, then submerged in a pot of tomato sauce where they simmer until cooked. Making the oversize meatballs is like making a lot of things Vulliez cooks: ''I can't tell you the exact recipe because we never measure."

Not measuring seems to be an important part of the recipe. If the meatballs weren't made by feel, they wouldn't be Mom's. Even if it's not a teaspoon of a secret ingredient, there's always something unalterable about family recipes. Ivan Basch, 44, of Lexington, a software manager and New England Barbeque Society judge, doesn't let his exposure to barbecue methods alter the way he makes his mother's beef brisket.

''Her specialty was Jewish comfort foods, like kugel and chicken soup with matzo," says Basch. ''She probably learned from her mother." His father, who came home from work before his mother did, took charge of weeknight meals. ''I was always jealous of the kids who were eating cheeseburgers and stuff. My parents were making chicken mole and stir-fry," says Basch.

What his parents also taught him was a curiosity about food. ''We're always exploring new restaurants, sharing tips," Basch says. Being a barbecue judge has given him ''a lot of appreciation for taking a cut of meat that can be tough, like brisket, and transforming it," he says. But he has no plans to apply his knowledge to his mother's slow-roasted brisket and onions: ''I don't want to mess with that one."

Portal, the Betty's Wok manager who lives in the South End, appreciates his family's culinary heritage, but he doesn't cook much at home. ''I live alone, and I'm at the restaurant all the time anyway," he says. ''I don't like to cook for just me. When friends and family come, yes, of course I'll cook. But it's important to me to have people around to eat and talk and share the food."

Speaking of sharing, the Trimble family gives away about 1,000 sweet, boozy, chocolate-covered Bourbon balls as gifts every year. Trimble won't even discuss divulging the recipe. ''That's not something I would ever do," she says.

Neither would Portal. He has the recipe for his grandmother's quesillo, and so do a few cooks he works with, but he's not about to circulate the formula.

Some recipes are handed down. But they're not handed out.