Recipes infused with time

Every year my husband passes through the kitchen and offers the same comment, which never fails to annoy me: “Why don’t you just computerize them?’’

“You don’t understand,’’ I tell him.

It’s not the same, not even close. No printed-off paper can even begin to convey what a soiled old recipe can, no matter how many smiley faces are embedded in it.

An old family recipe - the physical recipe - is about so much more than measurements and oven temperatures. It’s about what’s doodled in the margins, dripped on the page, scribbled on the back. It’s about my sister’s words of warning jotted on a cookie recipe: “They taste good but look ugly.’’ It’s about what’s conveyed between the lines - the sense of connection, the moral support. “Betty I received a letter from Phyllis that you wanted the Bar Mitzvah Crescent recipe,’’ some unidentified homemaker wrote on the back of a recipe she sent my grandmother-in-law, who then passed it down to me. (It was my husband’s bar mitzvah.) “Anyone who makes Blintz Torte like you knows how to do things.’’

Then, in perfect even handwriting and in voluminous detail, she shared her wisdom: “Roll the almonds with a rolling pin, not too small and a little at a time, makes it easier on hands. As little handling as possible!’’

In the days when women were homemakers, it was men who left the Big Legacies. They established scholarships or endowed chairs. Their memories are immortalized on wall plaques or new hospital wings.

But it’s recipes - the handwritten kind - that are the legacy of the women in our lives, in the form of “Jennie’s Cheese Pie’’ (whoever Jennie was); or “Shelly’s Coffee Cake,’’ Shelly being a friend of a friend - I barely knew her - who died in her 30s, from cancer. She lives on in my recipe box, between “Matza kugel (Eva) and “Debbie’s Amazing Caramel Apple Crisp.’’ (It is, in fact, amazing.)

The recipes are a kind of time tunnel for me. I read them and I’m back at my grandmother’s dining room table: One half was faded from the sun, the other half kept pristine by the towel she left there to dry out the egg noodles she made every week. I hear what is to my ears an ancient kitchen language - the language of chicken fat, pressure cookers, “salmon muffins,’’ “steak pans,’’ and “rubbed carrots.’’ I see smock-like aprons with buttons down the back and pockets with holes in them, repaired with fabric grafted on from other aprons.

I have to admit, though, these recipes are a mixed bag. Every year I feel obligated to make them, to keep the tradition alive, to teach them to my daughter, because I love the way they taste. But I rarely have the time. “I was up till 1 in the morning rubbing carrots for ‘Baba Manya’s Carrot Pudding,’ ’’ a bleary-eyed colleague told me yesterday. “I was saying, this is crazy! I can go out and buy one!’’

If she did, it would probably be healthier than the one Baba Manya made. “Amy’s Kugel,’’ in my recipe box, may be a mouthwatering favorite, but with five eggs, a cup and a half of sugar, and a full stick of butter, it is undeniably artery-clogging. Nor are these recipes fashionable: They’re the culinary equivalent of girdles and nylons and shirtwaist dresses with patent belts. Imagine sitting down to dinner in those every year.

Which is why I’m always tempted to try new recipes, the ones in the pricey cooking magazines that beckon to me at the supermarket - recipes such as “Sauteed Cabbage and Garlic Noodle Kugel,’’ which calls for extra-virgin olive oil, shiitake mushrooms, and low-sodium cooking broth.

But I never do. I could only imagine what my grandmother would say.

Linda Matchan can be reached at l_matchan@globe.com.