Some of the measurements in these recipes – oh, especially in Grammy’s recipes – are inexact. It’s customary for “real” cookbook writers to pre-test recipes and come up with exact quantities and ingredients, but these are home recipes made by our family for decades, and they work just fine even if the recipe calls for “a cup of chocolate paste.”

We have tried to standardize quantities – for example, changing pints of liquids or pounds of cheese to cups, where we think it might make things easier. In other places, we’ve left the original recipe as is, along with our best suggestion as to what “one small half package of figs” means.

• Milk, in these recipes, usually meant 2 percent or whole milk, and can be used interchangeably. Substituting skim milk will affect texture in baked goods, unless you know exactly what you need to to to adjust the recipe. If you must use one kind of milk to make a recipe work properly, we’ll let you know that. If you’re trying out one of our candy recipes, use exactly what is written, because candymaking is chemistry in action and you just don’t fool around with the instructions.
• Butter means salted butter. Laura always prefers salted, but Carla and Ania lived in the unsalted camp. Suit yourself, unless the recipe specifically calls for one or the other. Kerrygold gets a shoutout here because it tastes like butter tasted when we were children, not like the bland stuff in the grocery store now. We use it religiously.
• A “greased” pan means a buttered pan. Some of us use butter, and some of us occasionally use cooking spray (but never ever on nonstick pans, because the propellants ruin the nonstick coating). Grammy used Crisco, but Mom thought it was disgusting, so we never used it growing up.
• Vanilla means real vanilla extract, unless the recipe calls for vanilla beans. In general, “flavoring” means the best quality extract you can find. We usually rely on Penzey’s Spices and King Arthur Baking for whatever we need, although Costco’s Kirkland vanilla is excellent.
• As for other herbs and spices, we’re not snobs about using dried, but when you should use fresh in a recipe, we will tell you so. We are, however, very fussy about using Penzey’s because of their freshness and quality. If you are lucky enough to live near one of their stores, go there right now and open the glass sample jars of every spice and take deep and satisfying sample sniffs.
• As for pepper, you will eventually notice that we don’t routinely include it in most recipes, mostly because no one in our immediate family liked it much except Dad. Add it if you want to. Again, these are family recipes, made to suit our own tastes. Adapt them to suit yours.
• Mayonnaise means Hellmann’s or homemade. No exceptions unless you live in a region where Hellmann’s is called Best Foods. If this is the case, you are granted a variance.
• Parmesan means Reggiano if you can afford it and the best you can afford if you can’t.