– The editors at America’s Test Kitchen put out a nationwide call for family recipes, and the result was “From Our Grandmothers’ Kitchens: A Treasury of Lost Recipes Too Good to Forget” (America’s Test Kitchen, $29.95).

The book is divided into chapters such as “Church Socials and Potlucks,” where you’ll find a spaghetti and meatball recipe that came from the Abruzzo region of Italy to New York in the 1890s. In the chapter “Breads With a Story to Tell,” you’ll read about the escape of a family from Latvia during the Soviet invasion in World War II. Read the story, then make the family’s “Old Time Latvian Rolls.”

Nearly all of the recipes in this book have some sort of family story to go with them — some more exciting than others. In the chapter “Pies Worth Coming Home For,” you’ll read about a southern California woman who sold a lemon pie (known at the time as “Heavenly Pie”) to Clark Gable at a neighborhood Brownie troop bake sale. From then on, the pie was known as “Mom’s Gone With the Wind Heavenly Pie.”

— Meredith Goad, Staff Writer