How to preserve and digitise handwritten recipes
A handwritten recipe is fragile: paper yellows, ink fades, kitchen splashes pile up. And when only one copy exists, a single house move is enough to lose it. Here is how to save it for good, in three steps.
Digitise my recipes1. Gather all the recipes
Start by bringing everything together in one place: notebooks, cards, annotated magazine pages, recipes sent by message or saved on social media. Ask around the family too: an aunt may have the only copy of the Christmas dish.
2. Digitise them properly
A recent phone is enough, no scanner needed:
- Natural light, no flash or glare.
- The paper lying flat and fully in frame, without cutting off the edges.
- One photo per page, sharp and readable when you zoom in.
- Keep the original photos: they are your backup.
A photo is still just an image: you cannot search for an ingredient or fix a typo. Transcribing it into text makes every recipe readable and editable.
3. Transcribe and organise
Copying out dozens of recipes takes hours. COOQ reads the photo and transcribes the title, ingredients and steps: all you have to do is check them. With an account, your recipes are kept in your library and can be reused in other books.
Why print a book as well
Files get lost in a phone and online accounts close. A hardcover printed book sits in the kitchen, can be read without a screen and can be passed on. It is the safest way to still have these recipes in thirty years’ time.
And the originals? Store them away from light and damp, in acid-free sleeves if possible, and let the book take the splashes instead.