A family recipe is a way of keeping someone at the table after they’re gone.

A recipe is a set of instructions for reproducing somebody’s presence. The smell arrives before the food does, and for a second the person who taught it to you is back in the kitchen, which is not sentimentality so much as how memory is wired. It is one of the few things you can inherit and still use on a Tuesday.

Learn one dish from somebody in your family while they can still correct you. Write it down in their words, vague measurements included. Then cook it for people who never met them.