Project Name: Cross-Cooking and Learning

Generations of food knowledge and cookery skills are being preserved thanks to this Grundtvig Learning Partnership.

The ‘Cross-Cooking and Learning’ project involves older people (50+) coming together with younger adults to share their knowledge about traditional food preparation and cookery. In turn, younger members have helped them to record their knowledge using modern technology.  

The project was born out of a wish to ensure the continuation of traditional cooking and a need to find new ways to collect and record traditional knowledge.

Bangor University in Wales worked with partners from Finland, Germany and Italy to build cooking groups that twinned elderly and younger adults.

Each country set up 4 cooking groups. All groups had a common objective of sharing knowledge between countries and generations. The groups met to cook, swap stories, recipes and learn IT skills.

A group from Saxony, in the mid-east of Germany was made up of two young women and a pensioner couple. Together they collected simple, but typical Saxonian and German recipes for daily cooking as well as special occasions, such as the Saxonian sour roast and Leipzig potatoe soup.

The international meetings enabled the partners to share more widely.

"We learnt about each others' languages and cultures, we saw beautiful places and tasted foods we hadn't dreamt about. We made friends across the generations and across borders and got to understand the idea of Europe a little better".

The project partners have created a Cross-Cooking & Learning website, where participants publish recipes, photographs and stories. As a result of the project a cookbook in 4 languages, containing some of the cooking techniques and recipes has been published.

The Cross-Cooking and Learning project is funded by Grundtvig Partnerships. Find out how you can take part in a Grundtvig Partnerships project >>