No U.S. Census is going to tell you what your Great-Grandmother's go to meal was on a Friday night, but her recipe box that is in your mother's attic might. Thinking out of the box to mold your female ancestor's lives is key, since much of their lives was not documented like they male counterparts.
If you know your female ancestor had a signature dish, you may be able to research the origins of where the meal was created that may point you into area where you have family roots. Or it may just give you a glimpse into their daily lives.
My mother remembers her grandmother (Elsie May Miller nee Burton) making her silver dollar sized pancakes and sausage for breakfast and they would dress it with either sugar or maple syrup from the sugar maple trees they family had on their property. All the children would boast about how many pancakes they were able to eat, a sort of contest between siblings.
Other the other hand, my Grandmother on my paternal line (Elizabeth Jane Ferraro nee Welsh) taught me how to make ravioli. Now the trickier part is, that she was not from Italy. She was actually both Irish and German, but she married a man from Calabria, Italy. Therefore she learned and passed down all the family recipes that she had learned from her mother-in-law.
I will end with one of my favorite recipe cards that I found with my maternal grandmother's (Julia May Youngman nee Miller) recipe box. It is a recipe for a Butter-less, Egg-less, Milk-less Cake. Notice, the reasoning for such extreme lack of basic ingredients. (Rationing for WW II.)
