The little brown box, brightly varnished and made of slatted wood, sat on a curbside pile of discarded junk. The trash collector, a college student named Robert Slack, noticed it right away. He always looked the trash over carefully, searching for hidden treasures, like copper he could sell to the scrap-metal dealer down by the river. Once, he had found a suitcase filled with seven puppies, which he took to the local humane society.

When Rob picked up the box, he noticed a label on the front. It said RECIPES. The box was filled with three-by-five-inch index cards that were separated by category: Cakes, Pies, Roasts, Casseroles. Rob's girlfriend, Barbara Thompson, soon to be his wife, loved to cook, so he took the box home to her. It was July 1966 in a small central Illinois town called Pekin.

Barbara was an avid recipe collector. She studied the dishes on the index cards and in her mind began to piece together a picture of the box's original owner. The box contained 126 recipes, mostly written in pen in neatly rounded script. Some recipes had been clipped from newspapers and magazines that dated as far back as 1931. The cards were stained and water-spotted, evidence of a busy kitchen. A few recipes for shrimp and crab and salmon — all considered somewhat exotic in Pekin in 1966 — made Barbara think the cook was more worldly than her own mother, a farm girl who never made it past the eighth grade.

The collection suggested that the woman had had an active social life. There were recipes for fancy drinks and cocktails, Thanksgiving pumpkin pies, and a fruit-filled German bread for Christmas. It was obvious that she valued her community, judging by the number of dishes that were credited to someone else: Esther Fox's Bread Pudding, Aunt Etta's Pickles, Midge Gamwell's Date Bars. And someone in her house — or perhaps a bridge club? — had a sweet tooth. It seemed as if every third recipe was for dessert: Peanut Butter Muffins, Chocolate Ice Box Cake, Butterscotch Pie, and two for oatmeal cookies.