Even with that title, Rosie Grant’s book isn’t a mystery. It’s actually called To Die For: A Cookbook of Gravestone Recipes.The stories about the forty recipes do become a little repetitious, but the ideas behind this book are fascinating.

A little background. Grant was finishing a Master’s Degree in Library and Information Science in 2021 when so much of the world was still shut down. But, cemeteries were not. She interned at the Congressional Cemetery in Washington, D.C. Then, for a class, she had to create a social media account for a topic she cared about. She’s always been fascinated by cemeteries, and she posted about her internship, and then the ways people choose to be remembered or choose to remember their family members. During this pandemic, she lost both of her grandmothers, and afterwards, surrounded by family, she realized how important food is to our memories.

Grant stumbled upon a gravestone with a recipe on it. Then, she started searching for them. If a recipe is included in this book, the family cooperated, and told the story of the decision to put the recipe on the tombstone, what the recipe meant in the family. Each of the forty recipes includes a picture of the recipe on the gravestone, the story behind it, and the actual recipe itself. Grant also tried to cook the recipe. “I wanted to visit the gravestone, see their worlds, and bring their recipes back to life in a way I hoped would honor their memory.”

When I shared this book with my sister, Linda, she said I should take it with me to Mom’s this coming weekend. Grant has a list of 21 Questions to Document Your Food History, and she said we should talk about our family’s food history. We’ve done that a little. There are recipes that are unique to our family, and we don’t find them elsewhere. One is corn pudding, but it’s made with a wooden device, and it’s no one else’s recipe for corn pudding. My sister, Christie, now has the tool and the recipe. There’s the gumdrop bars my Mother makes at Christmas. There are some family recipes that we know the history of. We all make a dish we call “Funeral Rice” because someone brought it for the family after my grandfather died. I’m sure you all have at least one recipe that brings back memories.

Here’s what else I learned in reading the book. These types of stories and family recipes really embrace cooking and baking as a woman’s art. Of the forty recipes, only four are on a man’s tombstone. And, three of them were not home cooks. One was a professional baker on a kibbutz. One was a chef. One was a bar owner. This is not a definitive statement, but just an observation from reading the book. The children who choose to put recipes on a tombstone often put it there to remember the mother whose kitchen was the center of the home or a community. Those are the memories that linger, and are important enough to preserve in stone.

As I said, the book itself became a little repetitive about every mother who was such a wonderful cook or baker, and how important she was to the community. But, just as with quilts and other home arts, it’s important to preserve those stories and memories. To Die For is worth picking up as a tool to jog your own memory and start you thinking about family stories.

To Die For: A Cookbook of Gravestone Recipes by Rosie Grant. William Morrow/Harvest. 2025. 156p.

FTC Full Disclosure – The publisher sent me a copy of the book, with no expectations.