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They didn't intend to be recipe detectives. Or culinary anthropologists. They were simply two antiques collectors who were particularly interested in old food equipment, the kind of items that crop up like weeds in yard sales and estate sales everywhere: tin molds, flour sifters, juicers and raisin grinders, cookie cutters of all shapes and sizes, nutmeg graters, the stash stuffed in kitchen drawers and cupboards for more years than the owners — or their grandmothers — remember.

That's what sisters Marilynn Brass and Sheila Brass found over three decades of scavenging for their culinary collection of stuff. While on the hunt, they often ended up in the kitchens where the sales took place, stumbling across small boxes of handwritten notes or recipes. Which, of course, they also bought, being collectors with a passion for the sheer joy of collecting.

One of these days, the sisters thought, we really ought to try some of these recipes.

Life went on, 30 years of it, as the sisters kept collecting (they occasionally appear on "Antiques Roadshow FYI" as culinary antiques experts). Then Marilynn turned 60 and came to a realization: "I was going to write a cookbook using these recipes."

And she and her sister did. "Heirloom Baking With the Brass Sisters" (Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, $29.95) is the result. The subtitle spells out their effort: "More than 100 Years of Recipes Discovered From Family Cookbooks, Original Journals, Scraps of Paper, and Grandmother's Kitchen."

Their collection took on a life of its own as it revealed the cooks behind the notations. There was Bessie Rothblott Taglich, a Canadian by way of Poland. She married at 14 to a husband of 16, whom she'd met the day before their wedding, a marriage that lasted more than 60 years. Marilynn used the Internet to track down the surname and to find Bessie's granddaughter.

"We found that by reading those recipes — we call them living recipes — we learned so much about the writers," Marilynn said in an interview. "We found ourselves getting so intrigued by these people and their stories."

These culinary how-tos were written in cursive on the backs of envelopes, onto scraps ripped off paper bags, scribbled on the back of church donation cards and on pieces of stationery. Some were cut from newspapers, now yellowed and fragile. Many were stored in small wooden boxes or in notebooks. The Brass sisters often found shopping lists tucked between the pages and handwritten menus among the recipes.

They call these compilations "manuscript collections." They realized these collections held the stories of many families.

"Together, these collections are our American biography. Not all of the recipes from our own family came down to us in tangible form. Many were told like stories by three generations of women. Only by talking about their strudels, yeast breads, and cakes could we begin to understand how important our conservation of these recipes in their own words would be," Marilynn and Sheila wrote in the book's introduction.

"Heirloom Baking" offers a peek into the culinary lives of many women from kitchens of the past. These recipes date from 1865 through the 1970s (most of the recipes pre-date the '60s). As a whole, the book is skewed toward New England favorites. That is, after all, where the Brass sisters' prime collecting took place.

"There's a Jewish flavor to the book, too, but it's a culturally diverse book. It's really a story of women, sisterhood and community," the sisters said, talking over and with each other in their thick New England accents, as familiar in chatter as in lineage. (Think of the "Click and Clack" brothers, with their "Car Talk" show on NPR. Then double the accents and laughter.)

The Brass sisters gathered culinary history along the way as they sifted through the recipes.

● Flour was different 150 years ago. Texture and flavor often depended on the location of the mill where it was processed.

● Sugar was different — and varied by company — until processing and shipping led to standardization early in the 20th century. It used to be sold in a cone of blue paper.

● Oven temperatures and baking times were not given in long-ago recipes because wood or coal-burning stoves were used, and each was a little different and known only by the cook involved.

As any good collector knows, there's no end in sight. This book experience has led to another. "People have approached us, either given us or loaned us recipes from family and friends," Sheila said. Their next book will be on recipes from the World War II era.

As for all those culinary gadgets, the Brass sisters display them in their homes, changing the displays from time to time.

"It's an ongoing love," said Sheila.