Part 2 | Recipes, Gravestones & Cemeteries
A few months ago, maybe even a year, I came across an Instagram post that I found deeply fascinating - recipes on grave headstones. Not only was there one example, there were tens, and Rosie Grant put them all into her debut book, To Die For: A Cookbook of Gravestone Recipes, with 40 recipes from around the world.
As I dug deeper, I learned that Rosie's journey to this book began with Archives and Archival work! Through her ghostly.archive pages on Instagram, TikTok, and her website, she shares the story of how this work came to life.
"Rosie Grant is the creator behind @GhostlyArchive on TikTok and Instagram, where she researches and re-creates recipes found on gravestones. She works at the Center for the Study of Women at UCLA and is currently working on a food studies certificate at the UCLA Extension School. She received her Masters in Library Science (MLIS) at the University of Maryland with a concentration in digital archives in 2022, where she got to combine her love of food writing, cemeteries, and archival work. The gravestone recipe project first began during her digital archives internship at Congressional Cemetery in Washington, DC."
In an interview with Mold, Rosie shares that while doing an internship at a cemetery in DC, she stumbled upon gravestone recipes.
The first one was in Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, part of the open book gravestone of Naomi Odessa Miller-Dawson, born 26th November 1921, and laid to rest 10th June 2009, at age 87, with a recipe for her Spritz Cookies.
On Find a Grave: you learn more about Naomi, and the recipe.
Photo by Brenda Barr-Gilbert on 10 Sep 2019 | Source - Find a Grave
If you want to check it out, here are some tips from Atlas Obscura:
Know Before You Go - Technically, the grave is located in lot 44807. But it can be a bit hard to find, as signage is sparse. Just look for a worn, grassy footpath directly across from the cemetery’s Prospect Park West entrance, then follow the signs marking the numbered lots and keep an eye out for the unique design of Miller-Dawson’s memorial, meant to resemble an open cookbook.
Resources
- Cemetery and Archiving Research Resources on the Ghostly Archive