The recipes in this book are a compilation of as many as I could coax from Gruner family members who can remember some of the delicious foods they recall from “the good old days.”

In the beginning, we thought that we could gather them from our mothers who were born around the beginning of the twentieth century. Alas! Not enough of them appear to have survived. We then decided we should open them up to favorite recipes of members of our generation and to include those of our children who now are reaching middle age and retirement years.

You will find a listing of the many contributors to this effort in the back of this book.

We make no guarantees that any of the dishes will taste as good as they sound, but any good cook will quickly spot any adjustments that might be made. Neither do we promote them as original recipes. In fact, most of them were probably taken from some printed, perhaps copyrighted, source.

We do say they are unique, though, because they represent the varied tastes of descendants of Franz von Gruner and his wife Katharina Bergmann who came to this country over one hundred and fifty years ago and left us with a rich German heritage and an appreciation of good food.

Note that many of the recipes are headed with a musical symbol. These musical notes are used to indicate recipes from our older, deceased family members.