Culinary epitaphs: Recipe on Gravestone Helps to Remember the Dearly Departed

Culinary epitaphs offer a point of connection to the deceased’s descendants and anyone else who comes across them

Naomi Odessa Miller-Dawson's spritz cookie recipe is etched on her headstone in Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York. Yuki Iwamura/AFP via Getty Images

Debbie McNutt often joked that she would only share her recipe for tea biscuits over her dead body. So, when this elementary school teacher, wife and mother from Truro, Nova Scotia, died in 2019 from breast cancer, her good-humored family had it engraved on her gravestone.

“We laugh about that to this day, because she kept saying that to people,” says her daughter, Jennifer McNutt. “It was actually my dad’s idea.”

Debbie’s gravestone recipe is in good company. Rosie Grant, the creator behind @GhostlyArchive on TikTok and Instagram, has found 50 recipes at gravesites around the world, to date. She shares these recipes—from chicken soup to snickerdoodles—and the stories behind them in her debut book, To Die For: A Cookbook of Gravestone Recipes.

The search for gravestone recipes

Grant created her social media accounts while earning her master’s degree in library and information science at University of Maryland from 2020 to 2022. Grant was simultaneously completing an internship at the Congressional Cemetery in Washington, D.C., and a professor suggested that she focus on cemeteries. She began visiting and taking videos at final resting places, highlighting intriguing memorial statues and the gravesites of historical figures, along with major graveyards in the Washington metropolitan area, including Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia and the Mount Zion and Female Union Band Society Cemeteries in D.C.’s Rock Creek Park.

Rosie Grant (left), author of To Die For, visits Debbie McNutt's grave with Jennifer McNutt (right). Jennifer McNutt

“I didn't know that people had so many personalized memorials and gravestones in general, and every day I was learning new stuff that I had no idea people would do,” she says. “I just thought it was so beautiful, and it made death a little bit more like a celebration of someone's life.”

During the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, Grant read an article about Naomi Odessa Miller-Dawson, whose spritz cookie recipe was etched on her headstone in Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York. She baked Naomi’s cookies at home and posted her process via TikTok.

Her culinary demo went viral.

“A lot of people were weighing in on loss and grief and how they use food to cope, and how they cook particular dishes when they missed a lost loved one,” Grant recalls.

At this point, her project took a turn, as she began searching online for more gravestone recipes. Utahn Kay Andrews’ fudge recipe made headlines for erroneously listing one tablespoon of vanilla instead of one teaspoon, prompting a fix. Then, Grant learned about Iowan Maxine Menster’s headstone featuring her family-favorite Christmas cookies recipe.

Grant began visiting these graves in person, starting with Miller-Dawson’s. In lieu of flowers, she brought spritz cookies. “There was a world when people used to picnic at cemeteries and sit with a lost loved one. And so, I thought, ‘What if I make her cookies, and we’ll go and have a toast to her at her grave,’” she says. “It felt really right doing that.” Grant met Miller-Dawson’s family and made another batch of her cookies with them in Brooklyn.

She also began reaching out to living relatives of other gravestone recipe holders. Some vacillated, while others were open to chatting about their late family member’s meatloaf or cheese dip. Grant stitched these stories, recipes, family photos and images of gravesites into intimate portraits in To Die For.

Grant messaged Jennifer McNutt, a personal trainer in Nova Scotia, through her business Instagram page. On it, McNutt posts her late mother’s tea biscuits recipe around Thanksgiving and Christmas.

“We got on a chat, and it all just kind of came from there,” says McNutt. “It was very exciting.”

Grant has also found home cooks who put recipes on their pre-arranged gravestones. When Peggy Neal was purchasing a cemetery plot for her and her husband, Mitchell, she thought about what was important to her to list on their headstone. It was her sugar cookie recipe. She met and cooked with Grant, who included the recipe in her book.

“She said it was a special recipe she was proud of,” Grant recalls. “She wanted something unique to be on her gravestone.”

How food is associated with grieving

Food has long factored in to honoring the deceased. In the Victorian era, for example, it was common for Americans to picnic in cemeteries as a way to connect with the dead, and, more practically, because of a lack of public parks. Post-funeral meals have also historically been a means for communities to celebrate a life and offer sympathy and support to the bereaved.

Gravestone recipes appear to be a fairly recent concept. The oldest one Grant’s found is from the 1990s, while most are from the later 2000s. Though, with personalization becoming more common in funerals and gravestones, the trend should come as no surprise.

“In a lot of communities, people are known for their recipes and the food they share with their communities,” says Candi K. Cann, a Baylor University professor whose research has focused on death and dying. “So, I think recipes are a way in which you can hold on to someone and remember them.”

Iowan Maxine Menster’s headstone features her family-favorite Christmas cookies recipe. Jill Petracek

Changing monuments

Chantal Larochelle, a cemetery photographer and blogger in Sudbury, Ontario, has noticed gravestone recipes getting more attention on social media. Overall, changes in cemetery symbolism reflect a move from traditional imagery to ways of showcasing modern and personal interests, she notes.

These memorials to favorite dishes come in all shapes and formats. Miller-Dawson’s famous spritz cookie recipe is engraved on an open book gravestone, which usually lists the person’s name and dates of birth and death. Larochelle has found a mint brownie recipe on a marble plaque placed in front of a gravestone, a nut-and-bread recipe on an attached ceramic plaque, and recipes taking up the backs of tablet-type stones.

Monument companies have been steadily taking note of these special epitaphs. Jill Petracek

“Sometimes you’ll find a recipe on a gravestone that only has the ingredients listed and it doesn’t tell you how to make it,” says Larochelle, “and then you have other recipes where they’re very detailed.”

Monument companies have been steadily taking note of these special epitaphs. Nathan Lange, owner of Northland Companies in Minnesota and president of the Monument Builders of North America, says companies price a headstone or marker of this type based on what it entails, the biggest hurdle often being the recipe’s length.

Lange doesn’t think there are many cemetery regulations impacting gravestone recipes, but reminds people that cemeteries are for public viewing. “This is for all to see,” he says. “There’s more people that the recipe can touch; in my opinion, most people would be okay with that.”

Julia Gustafson, an artist and owner of Two Rivers Monuments in Elk River, Minnesota, has completed a few such epitaphs, with her latest project involving a gravestone etching of a lemon bar recipe. As a memorial designer, Gustafson asks to hear personal family stories to get a full sense of their deceased person.

“I think a headstone has two purposes,” says Gustafson, who specializes in hand etching. “Either you’re documenting the life that was lived, or you’re leaving a message for future generations. A recipe is a perfect combination of documenting their story and leaving it for the future generations.”

Gustafson incorporated Charleen Sand’s old-fashioned honey wheat bread recipe, containing cream-style cottage cheese, on her gravestone when she died in 2020. It’s thought that Char—as everyone called her—got this recipe, now in Grant’s book, while living in Germany during her husband Chuck’s military deployment in 1972 and 1973.

Allyson Sand, Char’s daughter-in-law, says that cooking for her family was how Char “showed her love.” She made two loaves weekly until developing early-onset Alzheimer's disease.

Char’s family gave an original copy of the bread recipe to Gustafson, who used a Dremel to replicate Char’s handwriting. The gravestone depicts both the front and back sides of the recipe card.

“She was taken so young, and my kids didn’t get to experience their grandma,” says Allyson. “But this simple recipe will always live on, and I want them to know who she was, even if it’s through [her] bread.”

It’s similar for Jennifer McNutt. Her mom, Debbie, was a very outgoing person who loved to entertain and serve on committees. But during the 18 years she was battling cancer Debbie had to miss out on all of this. “I feel she is smiling down, because this was her chance to perform and be on display again,” Jennifer says. “She still got to be a star and recognized for something that was all her.”

Through her cookbook, Grant advises families to have early conversations about burial arrangements and how relatives would like to be remembered. (For her, it’s through clam linguini.) She also gives tips for recording family history and food traditions.

Missourian Kimette Lee DeCota, who succumbed to an aggressive cancer in 2014, had a lifelong passion for cooking and dreamed of publishing a cookbook. Her daughter-in-law contacted Grant and shared Kimette’s beloved carrot cake recipe, which the family makes every Easter.

“And that’s how they keep celebrating their person,” Grant says.

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