Family Recipes Etched in Stone. Gravestone, That Is.
They say you can’t take it with you, but recipes do disappear when loved ones die. These families have found a novel way to record them for posterity.
At his home in Washington, D.C., Charlie McBride often bakes his mother’s recipe for peach cobbler. As he pours the topping over the fruit, he remembers how his mother, aunts and grandmother sat under a tree in Louisiana, cackling at one another’s stories as they peeled peaches to can for the winter.
Mr. McBride loved this family recipe so much that when his mother, O’Neal Bogan Watson, died in 2005, he had it etched on her gravestone in New Ebenezer Cemetery in Castor, La., a town of about 230 people. His mother’s instructions were simple: Bake the cobbler at 350 degrees “until done.”
In cemeteries from Alaska to Israel, families have memorialized their loved ones with the deceased’s most cherished recipes carved in stone. These dishes — mostly desserts — give relatives a way to remember the sweet times and, they hope, bring some joy to visitors who discover them among the more traditional monuments.
