Like DR S. Woody, my mother was very reluctant to share recipes with me. She taught me a few things in the kitchen and a few basic sewing things (buttons). But I think she though my learning these things might prevent me from looking for a wife, though why it's HER job to know these things, I don't know. Well, my mother was from that very gender specific generation that lived through the depression.
Anyway, her prize confection, cocoanut cake, she never sahred the recipe with me and went to her grave with the secret of its lusciousness.