"A lot of modern gravestones are very personalized. Maybe 200 years ago, or even 100 years ago, there would be one carver who would make a bunch of templated stones, and then just add someone's name and dates. It was pretty standardized. Nowadays, it's a blank slate that you get to fill in based on what was important to you. That might be a recipe, a music quote or even a call number to someone's book in the library or a reference to their dogs."
"When archivist Rosie Grant, who was was completing an internship at Congressional Cemetery in Washington, D.C., learned about this recipe on a gravestone back in 2021, she decided to bake the cookies and share a video of the experience on her TikTok account, @ghostlyarchives. Comments poured in, and she learned that there were gravestone recipes scattered across the U.S. So began her quest to cook the recipes and learn the stories of the people behind them"
Naomi Odessa Miller-Dawson's spritz cookie recipe is carved into her gravestone at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn. Archivist Rosie Grant discovered the gravestone recipe while interning at Congressional Cemetery in 2021, baked the cookies, and posted the process on TikTok @ghostlyarchives. Viewer responses revealed many gravestone recipes across the United States. Grant pursued a project to recreate those recipes and research the lives behind them, documenting background details and filling in missing instructions to make the recipes reproducible at home. The project produced a 40-recipe compilation that connects food, personal legacy, and communal memory.
Read at Boston Herald
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