01. The setup
You begin the Project.
Name it ("Mom's Kitchen"). Tell us about her. Invite your siblings as Co-Keepers — they'll add their own memories. Pick how we reach her: phone, video, or a family member leading with our prompts.
For the family keeper
Hearth calls your mother on the phone. She tells us about Sunday dinner. We turn the recipes — and the stories behind them — into a hardcover cookbook she gets to hold.
No app for her. We do the work. You read the book.
73%
Of family recipes are lost within one generation.
4–6
Months from first call to finished hardcover Volume.
Vol. I
Our first Volumes ship Summer 2026. Reserve a spot today.
The Method
01. The setup
Name it ("Mom's Kitchen"). Tell us about her. Invite your siblings as Co-Keepers — they'll add their own memories. Pick how we reach her: phone, video, or a family member leading with our prompts.
02. The conversations
About twelve gentle sessions across four to six months. Each centered on a theme — Sunday dinners, the holidays, the food of your childhood. We ask the good follow-ups: what did the kitchen smell like? Who set the table? She talks; we listen.
03. The pages
After each session, you receive draft pages — the recipe structured properly, the story in her own words, lightly edited. Siblings add side memories of the same dish. You approve. We refine.
04. The book
A hardcover Volume, eighty to a hundred and twenty pages, designed and bound. You give it to her at Christmas, on her birthday, the next time you see her — whenever she opens it. Extras for siblings. Every recipe links to a recording of her telling it.
— Why we built this —
Most family recipes are lost the first time someone calls to ask, and the answer is "I don't remember, honey."
The reason Hearth exists
Most families have one person who knows. The one who never measured. The one whose handwriting only she can read. The one whose hands know things her words don't.
The cookbooks that get made — the photocopied community cookbooks, the half-finished Word documents, the StoryWorth that ran out of steam in month three — most don't survive. They sit in a drawer. Or they never get finished.
Hearth is the first family cookbook designed to actually get made, and actually get kept.
The Object
Maria Petrillo · Vol. One
80–120 pages · cloth hardcover · gold foil title
Weeknight
"I made this every Wednesday for thirty-six years because Wednesday was the day before payday and you had what you had."
6 eggs · ½ cup pecorino · whatever vegetables you can find in the back of the fridge · olive oil, good · salt
Beat the eggs with the cheese and salt. Cook the vegetables in olive oil until they remember they are good. Pour the eggs over. Finish under the broiler.
A photo of Mom, 1979.
The frittata pan is the one in the kitchen now.
Who it's for
— 01 —
The adult child watching her mother get older, who knows the recipes in her head are the one document the family will never replace once it's gone.
— 02 —
The grandmother or grandfather who has been cooking the same dishes for fifty years and would love to be asked about them — slowly, with someone who actually listens.
— 03 —
The siblings and cousins scattered across cities, who each remember a different version of the same Sunday meal — and who need somewhere to put those memories together.
The Honest FAQ
Yes. She never opens an app. We call her on a regular phone (or video chat if she prefers). The work happens on your end. She just talks.
StoryWorth sends a weekly email and asks her to type the answer. Most projects stall. Most older parents don't want to type. We call her, the conversation is real, and we focus specifically on the recipes — which is the part most families actually want preserved.
Yes. Every Project supports unlimited Co-Keepers. Lisa can tell us she remembers Mom letting her lick the bowl, and that becomes a side-bar on the cookie page. The book becomes everyone's.
We're sorry. We'll work with you to finish the Volume from what we have. Many of our most-loved Volumes were finished this way.
We can do that. Family members each have sessions about the dishes they remember. We combine them. The Volume becomes a collective portrait, in food.
At launch: English, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Tagalog, French, German, Polish, Cantonese, Mandarin, Vietnamese. We are especially interested in immigrant family cookbooks.
They stay yours. The digital archive is permanent. The subscription is for the active interviewing — not for hosting what's already captured.
We've spent more time on this than anything else in the product. The interviewer is warm, slow, patient, and asks the kinds of follow-ups a thoughtful grandchild would. If she ever wants to do it in person instead, you can lead it with our prompts.
— A Last Note —
Start the Project this week. The first session can be next Tuesday.
Reserve your spotNo setup fee · Cancel anytime · Archive yours forever