It’s a very special pleasure to see holiday traditions passing down through the generations.

Our Thanksgiving gathering this year was at the Wilton home of our granddaughter and her husband. It was good old-fashioned turkey and all the fixings. From the dessert table we enjoyed a delicious apple pie, all the more important because our granddaughter said she used my mother’s recipe and flaky-crust hints for the pie.

Passing on family recipes has to be one of the oldest rituals of mankind. Most old homes have collections of torn and stained pieces of paper with a favorite dish of a relative or friend inscribed on it. Some are hastily scrawled in response to a request, and others are carefully detailed on index cards, and there are usually many clippings from magazines and newspapers tucked among old cookbook pages.

My wife, Judy, has several of her grandmother’s handwritten receipts (the old word used for recipes). There’s fresh apple gingerbread and ginger cookies, and my mother’s traditional mincemeat. Her list of ingredients for the mincemeat included cassia, which I had to look up. It’s cinnamon.

A cookbook published in 1919 by The Ladies of the North Auburn Grange contains many variations on basic dishes of the day. That Grange Hall once stood beside the stream that flows into Lake Auburn.

The ladies’ cookbook included Maude Bennett’s oatmeal cookies. It said they should be baked “in a quick oven,” meaning a hot fire. Stoves of that time might have been wood-burning, or fueled by coal or gas.

Edith Curtis told how mock lobster salad could be made from haddock with radish, celery and hard-boiled egg.

 “A fine substitute for lobster,” she wrote.

Directions for making hulled corn were included. It was a way to use yellow field corn by laborious cooking and soaking until the tough hulls were washed off. Six heaping teaspoons of soda to three quarts of corn hastened the process.

Eva Wills told how to prepare “Spring Chicken.”

“Take an old bird not too fat, dress carefully and skin it,“ she said “Then either steam it until done or place in pan of water in which a pinch of soda is dissolved, and boil until done.”

The chicken meat was then rolled in cracker crumbs or corn meal “with equal parts of pork fat and butter” and fried.

A lot of the recipes called for cooking in a “spider.” That was the name for cast iron frying pans. Another term not heard now is “gem pan.” That was a kind of muffin pan with small cups that made a dozen to two dozen bite-sized desserts.

The measurements for butter often called for “size of an egg” or “size of a walnut.” Several references are made to a cup of lard, and it always said “scant.” That meant just a bit short of full.

Another important detail of cooking many years ago was the need to scald milk and cool it before it was used. Pasteurization had not been adopted, and it was a necessary step to avoid curdling.

In 1919, grocery stores were selling many prepared products. Canned vegetables were common, but cooks still needed plenty of the cooking staples.

Flour was advertised for sale by the barrel at Seavey’s Cash Market, 83 Union St., Auburn, once located where there’s now four lanes of traffic at Court Street and Minot Avenue.

Collections of recipes in local and regional cookbooks keep many important traditions alive. One such cookbook will be published soon by the YWCA in Lewiston to aid their fundraising effort. Many YWCA members and friends are contributing favorite recipes that may be kept by L-A families for generations to come.