Found out my grandma's "secret recipe" pie came from a box mix from 1983

I was cleaning out her old kitchen cabinets last weekend and found a faded Jell-O cookbook from 1983 tucked behind some pots. Flipped through it and there it was, her "famous" lemon meringue pie, word for word, box mix instructions and all. I spent every Thanksgiving for 30 years thinking she spent all day making that from scratch. Has anyone else had a family food myth fall apart like that?

2 comments

2 Comments

zarab241mo ago

You're looking at it wrong. Her "secret" was making you feel special. She didn't lie about the work, she made a tradition. That box mix still took love to make. She remembered to buy the lemons, she knew it was your favorite. Grandma didn't owe you a from-scratch story. She owed you a good pie. And you got 30 of them.

park.robin1mo ago

Thirty years of the same box mix and she never once mentioned it. That's not a tradition, that's a performance. I mean, it's nice that the pie tasted good and all, but the whole thing was built on her pretending to be something she wasn't.