Mad Cook
Master Chef
Many years ago I started with a recipe for a fruit cake from Delia Smith's Book of Cakes. I've now made it so many times with so many changes that it is no longer anything like the original so I call it my own recipe.Im sure we've had this conversation before.
If you start with a recipe ( that has been published in a cookbook, website...), and you:
-Change some of the ingredients ( add some/ take away some)
-Mess with the amounts ( doubling/ halving initial amounts)
-Change cooking methods and times
How much of this has to change before you can actually or I guess should say ' legally' claim it as 'your own' recipe ??
Not that Im planning on publishing any of my recipes, but sometimes I look back at what i started with, and the final result, and they are unrecognizable to each other. Maybe the original recipe looks like a distant cousin or just an inspiration to the final creation.
I would never want to take any credit away from anyone, but at some point, I would have to think that the recipe becomes your own, since most of what we do when we cook is based on past experiences ( whether it be something we've seen, read, tasted ...)
Just curious,
Larry
There are recipes like the English cake called a Victoria sponge which involved 2 ounces each of self-raising flour, sugar and butter to each egg (depending on how big you want the cake). There seems to be no copyright on the recipe as it appears in every book on cakes printed in English and I expect the name of its inventor is lost in the mists of time.
And then there is the British cookery "celebrity" who shamelessly copies other writers' recipes, word for word, without any acknowledgement at all.
I did read that in America the ingredients can't be copyrighted but the method is copyright. I don't know if this is correct but if it is it sounds a bit odd to me. Would make more sense if it was the other way round, I think.
I think you'd really need to take legal advice on this as a mistake could cost you more than you make on sales of the book.
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