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The Smithsonian Anacostia Community Museum's Asian American Foodways collection brings recipes together with photographs, oral histories and other materials. That archival approach offers a useful model for families documenting their own food traditions, including Arab American households.
A recipe card tells a future cook what to do, but an accompanying conversation can explain why. Ask how a dish entered the household, which ingredients changed and what the cook means by an instruction such as adding enough water. Record the answer as that person's practice rather than a rule for everyone.
If you test a written version, mark your adjustments separately. Otherwise, an attempt to make the instructions clearer can quietly overwrite the original account. Photographing the handwritten card preserves another layer of information.
The resulting record can hold both a usable recipe and the history of its preparation. It need not resolve which relative makes the best version. Its value lies in keeping the choices, names and memories attached to the food.
Source and further reading: Smithsonian Anacostia Community Museum: recipes and cookbooks