I need a better approach to my cookery scrapbook!

[GuavaBanana]

Anyone else with a cookery scrapbook, how do you organise it?

Mine is stuffed with glued in scraps from newspapers and magazines, recipes from friends, stuff printed out, and stuff copied off the Interet (after the fateful day when a favourite vanished from BBC Good Food). I've had it since I left for uni.

I can't find anything because it's all random. Some of the recipes aren't very good but I didn't realise until after I'd stuck them in. Some I used ink pen to write which is now all smudge. However many of my absolute favourites are in there!

Am tempted to buy a new, beautiful notebook and copy the good ones across, ordered by vegetable (I'm always on the look out for new courgette recipes!)

But it seems like a lot of effort and it might not be any better . . . So I am looking for ideas if anyone has suggestions?

We’ve got one of the recipe books you write your own in and there are some print outs in there as well. If we try something new and like it we write it straight in the book after, as you say, the webpage disappears. It’s organised by breads, sauces, sweet baked things, veg dishes etc and it works well. Buy yourself a lovely new book! You’ll enjoy it and find it easier to use. It’s an investment.

This is like the one I’ve got. The format is helpful.

I print mine out and laminate them.

I then have them organised in a binder - snacks, main meals, baking, etc.

I use an old fashioned index card system, started out with a box but I now have a metal single drawer on the worktop (vintage library card index maybe?)

I have a ring binder with three sections: Tried & Tested, Like The Look Of This, and Events.

All clippings, printouts, hand-written recipes etc are filed in LTLOT. Once I’ve used them they move to T&T, including the recipes I thought I would like but will never use again. I often scribble so many notes all over these recipes, that sometimes I’ve had to stick the clipping onto a larger sheet.

Events is where I have kept track of what I served at which parties or large gatherings, and notes on how I modified recipes (eg for the vegan relative, or to scale them up). When I’ve used recipes from books at these events I will note the source, too.

And I use punch pockets where I think the paper might not survive.

I’ve taken photos or screenshots of all of our best recipes and have them stored in photo folders on my iPad. It’s super useful if anyone asks for a recipe of something I’ve cooked for them, or if I’m meal planning while waiting in the car for the dc to finish a club!

Not a scrapbook as such, just a file, with printouts or cut-outs, in clear plastic envelopes. But they still need culling now and then - there are some I’ve never made and almost certainly never will.

I recently took my recipe scrapbooks to pieces. I had two that I've been putting together for about 40 years. Many recipes in the handwriting of friends and reletives who are no longer with us so lots of treasures.

I bought myself a beautiful new book and stuck in all the precious recipes along with photos, letters and other little treasures. Then I rewrote all the butter-smudged recipes with an non smudge pen and numbered all the pages and made an index so I can find things.

The new book is so lovely that I now sit to look at it just for pleasure.

I'd take the opportunity to get a lovely book, and rewrite all your favourites and create an index so you can find them again. Any that you love that can be taken out and restuck, do that.

@Shedmistress Two minds with but one thought posted at exactly the same time 😀

Yes this is the sort of story I wanted to hear - because it's going to be a big job to do! Is your notebook lined or plain?

I don't think lamination is the way for me, I am a bit anti tech sometimes. I also hate cooking off phone recipes, that's a me problem.

I'm the sort of person that will pick up a ring binder the wrong way up and have everything fall out - multiple times. I do not learn.

I have a lovely Papier notebook in my online basket . . .

I just tear recipes out of magazines and shove them between the pages of my extant recipe books in random order. I am therefore in awe of all you organised people. My recipe books are heaving with handwritten scraps and torn out pages!

My book is a fantastic combination of lined on the right hand side and unlined on the left. I have to admit I ignored the lines though and often wrote out the recipes on pretty writing paper, vintage wallpaper and the blank side of old greetings cards. Oh and I stuck the envelopes of old greeting cards (with treasured handwriting on) into the book and use them to slot recipes into.

It was a big job but a real labour of love.

I have an Emma Bridgewater recipe journal binder. It's great, because the ringbinder format means you can reorganise things and redistribute pages, plus add things you've cut out of magazines (and it also includes a couple of sturdy plastic wallets for little things). They don't seem to make them any more but I have seen them on Vinted.

We have a vast scrapbook of recipes collected from magazines, many of which were never looked at again. In the end, we numbered all the pages, and we pick a page at random each week, making sure we do at least one recipe from the page.