Past to Present Kitchen brings new life to vintage recipes, explores food history, and celebrates the home cooks who shaped the way we cook and connect today.
Each recipe is sourced from vintage cookbooks, recipe boxes, and friends like you! We strive to stay as close to the original recipes as possible, making only minor tweaks to suit today’s home cooks.
We only share recipes we’d be excited to eat ourselves—so while a Jell-O dish might pop up now and then, you can count on it being delicious!
Most of all, we love sharing stories—whether it’s the history behind a dish or ingredient, a peek inside cookbooks from the past, or a closer look at the cooks who first wrote down or passed along the recipe.
Follow along, because every recipe holds a story!
Finding the Recipes
We are always searching for vintage recipe books and collections with interesting historical ties, especially where I can discover something personal about the woman who owned the cookbook or recipe box. We aspire to feature cherished recipes and stories from friends and family along the way, too.
We are also on the lookout for community cookbooks with character, diving into the people and history of the place and time they represent. And sometimes we’ll pick up old cookbooks simply because they look like fun!
We also love exploring cookbooks with historical significance—those that have shaped how we cook and entertain at home over the decades.
We are drawn to baked goods, sides, appetizers, easy dishes, party food, and cocktails—the kinds of things that bring people together. So you probably won’t see too many main dishes here!
Honoring the Original Recipes
We will only modify recipes slightly, keeping the integrity of the original while making small tweaks for current tastes or ingredient availability. My goal is to stay as close to the original as possible.
We might occasionally use packaged goods for convenience—and to honor the original recipes. While we all prefer fresh ingredients, sometimes a shortcut is exactly what the recipe calls for.
Food Trends Through the Decades
We’ll explore food trends and their historical context (Why do so many recipes feature dates? Why all the gelatin? What the heck is mace anyway?).
That said, you won’t find us making anything too outlandish. We want to focus on food we’d actually want to eat, so don’t expect any carrot and shrimp Jell-O salads here!
