When Is a Recipe Yours?

And when does “inspiration” become something else entirely?

Image: Yuki Sugiura, Food Stylist: Aya Nishimurafrom Cocoa: an exploration of chocolate, with recipes, by Sue Quinn

An unfolding recipe scandal is making headlines in Australia: a bestselling cookbook, allegations of plagiarism and a recipe developer with millions of followers laying out her case with side-by-side screenshots. Nagi Maehashi, the force behind RecipeTin Eats, has accused bakery owner and author Brooke Bellamy of lifting several of her recipes. Bellamy denies it. A lawyer is now involved, and others are being urged to come forward if they believe their work has been used without credit.

Since the story first broke, things have become more complicated. US baker Sally McKenney, known for her hugely successful blog Sally's Baking Addiction, has also accused Bellamy of copying one of her recipes. Bellamy has rejected all the claims, saying her recipes are based on years of personal experience and have been part of her baking repertoire since 2016. She has offered to remove the disputed recipes from future editions of her book to avoid further conflict.

Meanwhile, celebrity chef Luke Mangan has weighed in, saying Maehashi used one his recipes in her own book and gave him only a QR code credit. He would have preferred a more visible acknowledgment, he said, and a direct link to his website.

This isn’t the first time a row like this has blown up, and it won’t be the last. But what makes this case worth exploring isn’t the legal question of who owns a recipe. That’s been well chewed over, including by me. In fact, the Maehashi–Bellamy debate isn’t about that. It’s about somone allegedly stealing an ingredients list and a method, word-for-word, with no credit given.

Who pinched who’s recipe wording will no doubt come out in the legal wash eventually, and I hope it does. Even when developing variations to well-known classic recipes, there’s time, effort and skill involved in testing, fine-tuning and adapting them. To address what can go wrong in a reader’s kitchen and how to prevent a culinary fail; to order the instructions clearly; to use the perfect tone of voice for a particular audience; to enhance the method, flavours and textures. All of that is authorship. And when someone copies that without credit, it looks and must feels like theft.

But what I find more interesting is the uncomfortable questions the furore raises for anyone who develops recipes professionally. What does it actually mean to call a recipe “mine”? Where does inspiration end and imitation begin? Do recipe writers accord their counterparts sufficient acknowledgment for the inspiration (or more than that) they’ve provided?

Because most recipes aren’t completely original. Not really. Neither of the dishes at the centre of this dispute - a caramel slice and a baklava - could be claimed as unique invemtions. Both have deep traditions and countless variations. Recipes are often (mostly?) versions of other versions. A bit more of this, a bit less of that. Even dishes framed as brand new almost always rest on something older: a recipe passed down, an idea sparked by something seen in a book or eaten in a restaurant.

Recipe writers look at each other’s work constantly. We return to trusted books for timing guidance, to check a ratio, to be reminded of what works, for inspiration and possibilities. I do it constantly and so does every other cookery writer I know. If I’m developing a sponge cake, say, I’ll start with a standard ratio, then see where it takes me. Maybe I’ll swap out some flour for ground almonds, because I’m huge a fan of Claudia Roden’s orange cake, which is gorgeously heavy on the almonds. Maybe I’ll replace sugar with honey (I’ll have to adjust the liquid to account for it). I might add apricots and frangelico, because I saw that pairing in a pancake dish I once ate. That’s not copying, it’s recipe writing. You test, you adapt, you make it work on your own terms.

What I find particularly irritating is the way social media cooks constantly refer to “my” mac and cheese, “my” roast potatoes, as if they’ve somehow invented a widely known dish. In many caes they’ve deviated from a fairly standard dish and made a few tweaks. Claiming that as their own recipe erases the many other hands that helped shape it, and flattens the collaborative, evolving nature of recipe development.

But the line gets crossed when someone lifts what another writer has already done, detail for detail, without acknowledgment. If you read as many online recipes and cookbooks as I do, you see it a lot, to varying degrees. What do you make of the similarities between Claudia Roden’s famous orange and almond cake (first published in 1968 in A Book of Middle Eastern Food) and this one, written by another food writer?

Recipes are difficult to protect. Ingredient lists can’t be copyrighted. Instructional prose can, in theory, but few writers are in a position to pursue that. So we rely on good practice. We credit where credit is due. We say “inspired by” or “adapted from” or “thanks to.” We acknowledge our influences, not because we have to, but because we should. That’s the theory, anyway.

The Maehashi–Bellamy case will likely play out with no clear winner. Everyone concerned is being trolled. Reputations are being damaged. Lawyers might be the only beneficiaries. And for anyone who writes recipes, the controversy is pause for thought, though. Do we sufficiently acknowledge the origins of our recipes? Do we explain how that lightbulb moment - the clever idea, the unexpected flavour pairing -actually came about? Do we admit that the inspired decision to put A and B together wasn’t ours at all, but borrowed from a chef whose food we ate last week? And more to the point, should we?

I’ve been thinking about this a lot as I work on recipes for a new book. I love to read about the origins of recipes, how they evolve as they pass from one cook to another, why the recipe writer chose to develop that particular dish. But there’s not always space for that kind of background in a cookbook and, to be honest, I don’t always think to do it. But I now feel a fresh sense of how important it is. Because the truth is, very few recipes come from nowhere.

Take the chocolate fondant, or lava cake. I explored its tangled origins in my book Cocoa - the competing claims, the French chefs who got there first, the moment it became the height of 1990s dinner-party chic. But what I didn’t mention was the inspiration for my curd-filled version, which came from Rachel Khoo. Her lemon lava cakes in Rachel Khoo’s Kitchen Notebook are glorious, and the idea of using citrus curd in the centre of lava cakes (hers weren’t chocolate) was inspiring.

It’s a perfect example of how recipes evolve. One cook’s idea is absorbed into another’s, reshaped and retested along the way. I used yuzu, because I’m obsessed with its unique flavour and zing, and my book was all about interesting and unusual chocolate pairings. It worked beautifully. So, belatedly: thank you Rachel.