The Takeout: Why Recipe Exchange Emails are Filling up Your Inbox

Even if your kitchen counter is crammed with every possible gadget and appliance, there’s probably one thing it doesn’t have: a little metal box full of handwritten recipe cards. First, Betty Crocker doesn’t live with you. And second, thanks to the internet, you have instant access to every recipe you could ever imagine, plus a few you’d rather not imagine.

Yet recently you may have noticed your inbox filling up with recipe exchange emails that promise that if you email one recipe to the first person on the list, then forward the message to 20 more people, you’ll end up with 36 new recipes. Why are we suddenly interested in sharing recipes instead of searching for them? Short answer: Quarantine does strange things to people, including transporting them through a collective wayback machine to an era of sourdough starters, banana bread—and recipe exchanges.

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Sarah Peterson, who blogs at Vintage Dish and Tell, agrees that the exchanges are pure nostalgia. They offer up safe, cozy feelings, even if the message arrives through technology. “People are craving comfort food and looking for recipes that remind them of home,” she says. Still, not everyone, even a nostalgia lover, makes time to participate in an email recipe exchange. Peterson received one but admits that she let the message slide to the bottom of her inbox and never got around to responding: “I feel so guilty, but I just didn’t do it.”