Hey! Totally on the subject, I emailed you kids about posting two recipes which I translated and converted on my blog. I know you receive a billion emails (at least) a day, but are you cool with that? I can re-send the email if you wish. Thanks!

Yeah Shellyfish, go ahead! I am really behind on emails, sorry about that!

I think some people don’t want to give away their “secret” because they think others will be less impressed with the results. It’s like how people (hopefully) feel ashamed of bringing store-bought brownies to a party because they know others will be like “this is the best you could do?” And then if you cook a fabulous meal for people and they’re so amazed and say “where did you come up with this?” you would rather pretend that you dreamed it up than let your appreciative guests down by admitting all you did was follow directions. But I think such cooks really underestimate their abilities because not everyone can get good results from a recipe–cooking is an art that takes experience and intuition. It is also always learned from other people, whether by going to culinary school, watching grandma in the kitchen, or following someone’s cooking show or cookbook.

Cool, thanks! I love to share your cupcake-love with my francophone readers! (I love to share cupcake-love with everyone, really.)

I am NOT a recipe-maker, although I so wish I were. I am a nutritionist with a blog on all the science to support a plant-based diet, but am always looking for good links to vegan blogs with recipes. Looks like yours would be a good one.

Totally agree on the whole matter

We are so fortunate to live in an era where we can share information and recipes with people around the world: thanks PPK forums ! We can share recipes from other decades or even from another century.

With this wonderful opportunity comes additional responsibility. When we network online to mass-distribute what some one else has taken the time, energy and investment to uniquely create, it is our responsibility to identify the origins. Yes, the lines of originality or actual origins may be blurred in some cases (think of the volume of recipes out there and all the individual adaptations), but what happened on Vegweb was some one taking and enjoying the credit for recipes that were not hers. That was intentional deception for personal gain; she wrote she planned on using them in future ventures.

I totally missed this whole Chef Lindsay debacle. And the McCain cookie debacle (Michelle Obama makes elitist cookies? Can someone please give Jeanne Moos a boot to the head?).

Little known historical fact: James K. Polk almost lost the Democractic nomination in 1844 after claiming he forged his own horseshoes. Turns out his “people” merely bought them from a small blacksmith shop outside of Nashville and payed the proprietor hush money. Unfortunately for the Whigs, Henry Clay was unable to capitalize on what the press called, strangley, “horseshoegate.”

“Would you rather have fresh baked cookies from someone who visits Hersheys.com or by someone who has a friend with a collection of vintage salt and pepper shaker and a box of recipes that goes back to the civil war?”

Basically, we want to get all our recipes from Kittee.

Man this is such a hard topic. I always try to link back to any websites/blogs that I reference for recipes – and I rarely come up with my own that aren’t somehow influenced by another source. What worries me is the fact that I might not have thought of putting x item in y recipe without having heard about it somewhere – trying it at some restaurant – seeing it in a cookbook – and just letting time glaaaaze over the fact that it wasn’t an original idea. Perhaps it’s being overly cautious but still – I worry. And who is to say that my family’s Thanksgiving corn pudding recipe (recently veganized) didn’t come from some Kraft book back in the day and didn’t just magically ooze from the brain of my Gran-Gran? Oy.

VeganDad – That is interesting. I wonder if it’s the same mentality with anything “domestic” or “crafty.” What? Horseshoe making is crafty!

Walktopus – “Basically, we want to get all our recipes from Kittee.” AMEN! Girl makes the best cookies!

Allison – I don’t think we need to get in a tailspin over crediting people. I think just being honest is what it’s about, not interrogating our grandmas.

Thanks everyone, for your thoughts on this!

The way I see it there is no way to tell if your recipe has been done before. There just isn’t. You can’t ask everyone on the planet if they have tried a certain mixture of ingredients before, so even if you “make it up” you might not actually have been the first to do so. If someone goes to pastry school, and memorizes components to make a basic recipe, and then switches things around with other components that will work just as well…does that mean that said person actually created a NEW dish? I don’t believe so. In a manner of speaking, everything has been done. It is like art. You can build upon the work of others, but it is all about style. people don’t usually invent completely new ways of cooking. It is based upon something before them. Everything is.

My personal belief is also that if you put your recipe out there, you know there are no copyright laws about recipes…you are taking your chances. If you really feel so strongly about someone else not having “your recipe” (which chances are is based upon someone else’s recipe in the first place) then you shouldn’t put the recipe out there.

*”you” in this comment does not mean YOU personally ;-) it is a general you.

and those tofu balls look yummers

Is it necessarily plagiarism? She wasn’t claiming authorship of the recipe herself. I have a whole book of awesome ‘family’ recipes that I got from my grandmother a few years ago. I know SHE didn’t write them (and quite a few are obviously torn out from other recipe books), and half of them say “Got from so-and-so”, and transcribed, most likely over the phone.
I’m not a professional recipe book writer or anything, but I can honestly say I’ve never tried to find the source of any of “grandmas recipes” before….for all I know she wholesale lifted from Julia Childs or something :)

I came across this blog whilst looking for something totally different but it has made me smile and i felt i couldn’t pass it by without commenting.
The whole concept of food recipes being passed from generation to generation is such a lovely idea and indeed in our family there are mny sch recipes, typically of russian and pokish descent , but i do have one favourite recipe which we call smarty ckae, mainly because smarties are used to decorate the top! Our friends always think it is a secret recipe but i am happy to give it to any one who will listen, it is an addictive fridge cake with all bad ingredients in but so totaly yummy you just have to have one more piece! I am always being told i should market it but the real pleasure is knowing that you jave made a dish that others will really tuck into and enjoy.
so thank you for writing down your thoughts.
marla
http://www.shappsandcoutts.com

Interesting insights. I didn’t know about the whole Cindy McCain debacle.

Also, my mom has that same pyrex bowl!

I agree with Marissa. And another thing. So many of those “family recipes” that have been handed down for ages and ages. I love all our ancestors, but I don’t give them that much credit. So many of those cherished recipes were found in magazines, Betty Crocker mail ins, backs of packages. It just happened that over time the true source was forgotten.

I took a class about food in American culture last fall and part of the class was oral histories of our families. A lot of people reported back that they have family recipes that couldn’t possibly be more than 50 years old simply because ingredients/appliances/methods didn’t exist before them.

Personally I find it hard to follow recipes completely anyway. They are more like guidelines. But when compliments I smile and tell them its from a cookbook and they were really easy. My go to chocolate chip cookies are a vegan version of the ones on the back of the Tollhouse chocolate chip package. Anything to give people the confidence to try cooking.

hah! i just recently e-mailed you to ask you if i can have permission to share your recipes on my page with a promise of full disclosure and a link to your site…it was graciously granted, thank you!!

i laugh because as soon as i read this i felt compelled to go back and make sure all of my blog recipes gave proper credit to any original recipes i had adapted. (none of yours are on there yet-i’ve been busy making a kajillion cookies and cupcakes for one reason or another) i actually found one i forgot to credit and immediately amended the mistake. so thanks for the reminder. (smile)

by the way, i have that same bowl in green. it’s my favorite bowl.

~peace~

Who let Walktopus in my kitchen? So creepy.

I might post more about this topic later. I’m not formulating thoughts well presently.

xo
kittee

Oh. Also.

NICE PYREX!!

xo
kittee

I think this post is really about Isa being pissed that other people are sharing her recipes online.

Nope, Shawn! I don’t mind at all. I think I’ve written about that before. Not sure if you were kidding or not. The only time I get remotely pissed is when I know something is my recipe and someone acts like they made it up.

kittee, I hope you share your thoughts! I know we were talking about it a bit on the boards, which is what made me start this post, and it ended up way too long for a message board post.

My grandma had an awesome cookie recipe. She took her Betty Crocker cookbook (which I would kill to have), and wrote some alterations in the margins. I’d still refer to it as my grandma’s cookie recipe.

Yeah Katie, I would, too. I think it starts getting shady if your grandma told you she got it from the Queen of England.

Very interesting discussion. And your photo is making me reach for my aging copy of Tofu Cookery!

Those are actually a picture of the kidney bean calls from Vcon. I don’t have any pics of the tofu balls! But yes, revisit that recipe, it’s an awesome one.

Tofu cookery was my first vegetarian cookbook, as well. My mom gave it to me when I made the hasty decision to eschew meat. She refused to cook special meals for me and was tired of watching me eat cheese sammiches, i suppose. It introduced me to cooking for myself, and made me look at tofu and other ingredients in an entirely different way. (I’ve never made those tofu balls, by the way, but the tofu loaf recipe is still one of my all-time favorites.)

I find it’s so hard to track where ideas come from. Often I think up an idea for a recipe and when I search the internet for it, I find it’s already been invented

I once worked for a cookbook author. She found that a few of her recipes had been lifted intact from one of the books, and got the other publisher to put a tag in identifying the source. That was in the 60′s — these days she’d sue for big $$ and a piece of the royalties, I suppose. (My only time in the kitchen, I made a cookie recipe that was painted on the wall to cover cracks. In total ignorance I put them in the oven under the broiler. They tasted good but came out as big as saucers!)

I was just thinking about something similar to this last night, because as I made dinner, I made up a lentil/cauliflower dish as I went along, then blogged about it later. Then I worried that maybe it’s really similar to something in Vcon or VWAV and that I’ve used those cookbooks so much that the only way I know how to cook is Isa-&-Terry-Style. Like, I’ve made spinach-chickpea curry so much that maybe “my” dish was just replacing the spinach and chickpeas with cauliflower and lentils. But, I was too lazy to get off my ass and actually check your cookbooks for anything. So if I stole something, it’s because I’m a slacker fan. xo

I think some of what I was saying was misinterpreted. I wasn’t really suggesting that everyone constantly and tediously track the roots of their recipes at all! i was wondering two things, 1- when a recipe becomes ones own and 2- why people outright lie about a recipes origins.

Shut up everyone!

Copyright law clearly states that a list of ingredients is not copyrightable, therefore a recipe is not either. Only if you copy the directions word for word might it even come close, but still the steps of a formula are not copyrightable either!

Everyone has built on someone elses idea, otherwise nothing would be created.

Shut up, be happy someone told you about the recipe, whether they made it up entirely or not, and eat it!

This is one thing I like about Nigella Lawson the non-vegan cookbook author. She borrows from –and properly cites her inspiration for each recipe, ranging from other authors to magazines to her grandmother.

I do think that recipes evolve and build upon each other. Every cook has influences just like artists have influences.

Hard thing about creativity is that there is seemingly so much ego involved. But it’s only when you let go of that ego can you truly get creative.

Elisa, your brilliant insight has already been covered in this blog post. Try to read before commenting. And if you’re going to tell people to shut up, at least try and be interesting about it.

UV..Agreed on Nigella!

Great post.
No idea what motivates the sort of plagiarism of a Chef Lindsey, but the desire to wrap food in the mystique of a family recipe makes sense.
It does tell us a lot about how we feel about food. The cookies should taste the same either way, but they don’t. People like a story, and “it came from a website” can feel cold. And cooking and feeding people feels so personal and intimate, it’s easier to forget that others were involved in your dinner.
I think it’s very bold that Nigella cites her sources–she has enough confidence in her own creation to know it won’t lose power if people see where it comes from.

I am thinking of starting my own baking blog and am really confused about copyright laws when posting recipes. I am all for giving credit where it’s due since almost every recipe that I have tweaked to be my own started as someone else’s. Are there any rules about providing a link to the original author’s website or quoting which recipe book it was from? Also, are there any recipes that aren’t okay to reproduce even when giving credit? I’d appreciate any information you have! Thanks!

I agree that this is a confusing issue. I have a background in research and I was always taught (er had the fear put in me) that there are no original thoughts. Yes, I know this may not totally be true, but the idea behind it was you can’t just put something out there as fact without backing it up with someone already credited for the idea.

I try to do the same with recipes. I have a blog and post other people’s recipes, I do my best to always give credit where credit is due. Even when I have modified the recipe, that doesn’t mean it is original.

I figure as long as I am being honest about it, it will be fine. If someone didn’t want their recipe shared, why publish it?

I think if you are actively trying to deceive the public into believing a recipe inspired by another is your original creation, well, that’s just bad mojo.

Having said that, there’s just so much out there, sometimes it is hard to pinpoint exactly where an idea came from. As long as you try your very best to be as transparent and respectful as you can, I think it’s nice to see the (vegan) foodie community sharing and inspiring one another.

Also, I totally commandeered one of your recipes the other day. Please don’t sue me! http://www.mywholedeal.com/recipes/vegan-sundried-tomato-super-spread/

I think it just comes down to the plain good values of honesty and integrity. Give credit where credit is due if you know for a fact that the recipe was from someone else or heavily influenced by someone else. I don’t think it has to be a long thought out process. You either stepped into your kitchen and created something after seeing someone’s recipe and thought I’ll make that or tweak it or you looked into your fridge and threw some things together and made an amazing original meal. What matters, in my opinion, is whether you knowingly used someone else’s recipe and claimed it as your own without giving credit to the creator/inspiration.

Dan Ariely talked about an experiment in one of his books that indicated that people only feel right about presenting a product as “theirs” if they’ve made at least 30% of it. It was nicknamed ‘the Ikea effect’ and applies to anything made, though the specific example was boxed cake mixes. When you only needed to add water, people didn’t like them as much; when you needed to add eggs, and a few other ingredients, people were happy to make them. They felt ownership.

Presumably, if you’ve made a recipe, you feel some ownership of the final product, which is, perhaps, why people are tempted not to reveal where they found the recipe.