Recipes prepared in food company test kitchens and printed on labels might be on the verge of a comeback

The staple of church potlucks, parties and even the dinner table, back of the box recipes prepared in major food company test kitchens and printed on product jars, cartons and boxes just might be on the verge of a comeback.

"In some respect, they've never gone away because they've always been there on the back of the box, but in the '80s and '90s, people stopped cooking at home as much," says Eleanor Hanson, who spent 17 years creating recipes in Kraft's test kitchens in Chicago and Glenview.

But whether it's the economy, nostalgia or a little bit of both, people seem interested in re-creating dishes from their childhood.

One new resource for home cooks is Back of the Box Cooking (Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, $19.95), a collection of author Barbara Greenman's favorite recipes.

Hanson is currently at work on a book with Roosevelt University professor emeritus and culinary historian Bruce Kraig that will trace the evolution of recipes from their humble beginnings before the turn of the 20th century through their heyday in the '50s and '60s to their current re-emergence.

"Some of the most coveted family recipes came from the back of packages and boxes," Kraig says. "Flip through a couple of community and church cookbooks and you'll see that many of the recipes are from the back of the box."

Kraig says one of the earliest companies to use this marketing technique did so out of necessity.

"When Quaker Oats first came on the market, people didn't know how to use oats," he says. "Most people thought oats were just for horses and the earliest recipes printing on their oatmeal boxes were designed to show consumers how to use the product."

A 1908 recipe for oat cakes -- 3 eggs, ½ pound of butter and 3 cups of oats -- was an early precursor to that company's more famous creation, the Oatmeal Raisin Cookie.

Even that recipe has been tinkered with since it was first introduced in 1955. Quaker's official recipe now calls for butter or margarine in place of shortening. The original recipe has a cult following on the Web, though.

Hanson says the oatmeal cookie recipe is one of the few iconic recipes that test kitchen veterans refer to as "holy grail recipes" that cannot be improved upon.

Kellogg's Rice Krispie Treats, Chex Party Mix and Ritz Cracker's Mock Apple Pie, now celebrating its 75th year, are among those considered holy grail recipes.

Recipes such as Libby Pumpkin's Pumpkin Pie and Campbell Soup's Green Bean Casserole have become staples of the holiday table.

"I'm not even certain they'd still be making the French's fried onions if not for that recipe," Hanson says.

"Libby's pumpkin pie recipe has become the standard recipe that everyone uses," Kraig adds. "You don't get much more iconic than that."

Hanson notes that companies hardly ever alter such timeless entries.

"Test kitchens will rarely tinker with iconic recipes like these and when they do, they usually hear back from consumers negatively," she says. "You just don't mess with them, let alone take them off the box."

The recipe for Borden's Eagle Brand Sweetened Condensed Milk's Magic Cookie Bars has remained unchanged since its introduction in the '60s, but the name has been updated. The dessert was originally called Hello, Dolly Bars in reference to the Broadway musical that was popular at the time.

"I talked with a gal who had been in the Borden test kitchens for years and she told me the seven-layer bar was just one of several 'magic line' of recipes her team had to come up with that used the sweetened, condensed milk," Hanson says.

When your job is to continually come up with new recipes, you don't have much time to look back on the successes and failures. Hanson she can recall only a few misfires.

"The worst thing we could hear from a brand manager was that they had partnered with some other product and we had to figure out a recipe that used both," she says. "I once had to come up with a recipe using Kraft Macaroni and Cheese and Spam. Sometimes we knew going in we were just trying to avoid a train wreck."

The trouble with both those products? Neither photographs very well.

"Recipes have to look attractive," Hanson says. "One of my proudest moments was the one year we came up with a recipe for a bed of Macaroni and Cheese with vegetables and skewers of Spam and vegetables. We did the best we could with the cards we were dealt."

Another flop was Kraft's answer to Betty Crocker's Hamburger Helper.

"Ours was called 'Chef's Surprise,' but it didn't last too long," she says.

Many still consider the Edsel of food products to be Jell-O's decision in the early 1960s to produce unusual flavors of gelatin including Italian salad, celery and tomato. At the time, savory aspic recipes were popular in French cuisine.

Hanson says despite the Kraft test kitchen's best efforts, the flavors never really caught on with American consumers.

"When the average U.S. consumer was thinking Jell-O, they were thinking of something sweet, she says. "A homemaker is no fool. No recipe is going to get someone to buy something they don't want."

Kitchen mistakes often yield magical results, though. In the early '30s, a Massachusetts inn owner named Ruth Graves Wakefield substituted a chopped up bar of Nestle semisweet chocolate for baking chocolate when making cookies. The chocolate bar never fully melted as baking chocolate would have.

"We wouldn't have the Toll House chocolate chip cookie without that mistake," Hanson says.