Aunt Mary's recipes. (On Being Southern).

The dingy green box has sat on my shelf for years, but I've never found the time to go through it. Great Aunt Mary's recipe file. Aunt Mary cooked in the days when you ate breakfast in the breakfast room on the everyday plates, and dinner in the dining room with the good china. She was a true homemaker--ladylike, but hardworking and frugal. I've seen her put her heavy-duty aluminum foil in the dishwasher so she could use it again. Some of her recipes date back to the 1930s, and in this day of microwaves and convection ovens and heat-and-eat cuisine, I never thought to look at them.

Until today.

The index-card-sized box has a silver handle on the end, curved downward for easy opening. The handle is engraved: THE AMERICAN HOME MENU MAKER. As I slide the drawer open, I am greeted with the fragrance of old. Old newsprint, old magazine paper, old tape. The recipe file is organized; the orange-tabbed dividers section the recipes by category--breads, appetizers, eggs, cheese dishes--and by days of the week. I begin with beverages, and I find an interesting one written on the back of a blank check from the First National Bank and Trust Co. of Vicksburg. The check, aged to a taupe color, has in the blank for the date "193__." No name, address, phone number, social security number, or shoe size is printed identifying the owner of the account. The recipe, written in Aunt Mary's distinctive handwriting, reads:

2 dash Orange flavor water

Juice of 1/2 Lemon

2 Tablespoons Sugar

1/2 Cup Sweet Cream

White of Egg

Fine Ice

A raw egg? Really? I hope Aunt Mary saved this recipe for unwelcome guests, perhaps thieves or people who wear white shoes after Labor Day.

The salad recipes from the 1930s and 1940s are made from fruits or vegetables, not the leafy kind I often make. Aunt Mary's salads contain cream and marshmallows and eggs. But my favorite reads, "Cool shimmering tomato aspic nestled in a bed of crisp lettuce will lower your temperature on a hot day." I love this. And as I dig deeper, I am less interested in the recipes than in the writing that surrounds them. One marshmallow-laden salad, sent in by Mrs. Edd Hammack, 3809 St. Frances, Jackson, proclaims, "This salad can be made twenty-four hours before time for use, which spares the hostess the terrors of the L. M. R. (last minute rush)." My L. M. R. experiences usually include hiding the pile of accumulated mail while hoping I can find it again tomorrow, and rapidly changing out of my cooking clothes so I won't smell like a lunch lady when my guests arrive. Terrors.

As I inch through the file, I find notes Aunt Mary wrote to herself. "Keep" and "Delicious" season the clippings, while the handwritten recipes, many covered in plastic, include her serving suggestions. I note with interest that the "Scripture Cake" is followed by a "Devil's Food Cake," and that many recipes call for "sweet milk," which I'm sure Aunt Mary retrieved from her "icebox." When I slip and call my refrigerator an "icebox," my kids look at me as if my shoes were still wet from my long journey to the New World on the Santa Maria.

Not everything in the file is a recipe. A postcard, a 2-cent one, is simply addressed, "Mrs. Tom Hendrix, Dunbar St., Jackson Miss," and on the back is a recipe for a fruitcake and a note from one of Aunt Mary's legion of friends. A letter from Gourmet magazine, dated March 23, 1949, answers Aunt Mary's request for a spiced tea recipe. It's signed in real ink by a real person. At the bottom of a recipe for Charlotte Russe, Aunt Mary did a little figuring.

For 50 People

Cream 1.20 (3 pts.)

Gelatine .30 (1 1/2 pkg.)

Eggs .42 (18)

Sugar .12

Strawberries .60 (3 boxes)

2.64

I can't think of anything I could serve to 50 people in this new millennium that would only set me back $2.64. Perhaps toothpicks, but just the plain wood kind, not the ones with the crinkly cellophane at one end.

After a delightful hour of going back in time, I carefully put Aunt Mary's legacy back in the dingy green file box. I wonder what she would think about food processors and cappuccino makers and balsamic vinegar. We may have changed the way we cook in more modern times, but our goal is the same. We want to serve our families and guests the most delicious and beautiful food possible.

And, hey, I might even spend an even $3. It's only money.