Cooking Contests
I've been toying with the idea of entering a cooking contest but my question is this: How can anyone out there claim a recipe as entirely their own? Many of my recipes are amalgamations of recipes or inspired by recipes I've read or food I've eaten out. Does that count? Is this just the paranoid good student in me who's afraid of inadvertently plagiarizing?
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13 Comments:
There is an interesting book about the cooking contest/recipe contest circuit called "Cookoff!" It follows the story of several veteran contesters as the make the rounds. I would recommend it for background reading, and it does address your questions about originality.
Penelope at 10:36PM on 03/11/08
A dead giveaway in a cheesecake cookoff would be handing the judges the package the cream cheese came in... other than that it would seem to me to be rather a gray area for judges to prove.
Pavlov at 10:42PM on 03/11/08
If your secret recipe came straight out of the Betty Crocker cookbook, they'd probably figure it out eventually. But if you've added ingredients and tweaked measurements, it becomes your recipe. Whether that's enough to get you noticed is a whole other thing.
dbcurrie at 2:17AM on 03/12/08
As i was starting to enter cooking and baking contests, I did a little research on this topic, and even Food and Wine magazine has covered this a little about a year ago. The thing is this: you cannot copyright or patent a recipe. That being said, even if you almost identically copy one recipe, it becomes yours once you twist it a little. This could be something like eliminating the teaspoon of salt in a cookie batter, or ading nuts to the basic recipe for a bundt cake.
It sound unfair, and it can certainly make things difficult, but that's the nature of recipes. As many cooks and bakers as there are, there are that many "recipes" for a food item. And the other part is this: i can use the same recipe for a chocolate chip cookie that someone else uses, and it will still come out differently, because maybe one of us used a hand miser, and the other used a stand mixer with a whip attachment...the variations go on. That's why many contests require that you be *very* specific about quantity, oven temperatures, equipment and technique, et cetera. Even a little variation can mean that you can consider a recipe yours.
Does that make any sense? If not, I am trying to find the links to a few places that might offer some insight. Wish me luck...it's been a little while...although, I could use the refresher, too, as I get ready to start in the annual competitions again this year.
Out of curiosity, which contests are you considering?
Traveller at 8:59AM on 03/12/08
Okay, here is an article that came out recently about copyrights and such, involving recipes. This might help a little.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/03/AR2006010300316.html
Traveller at 10:17AM on 03/12/08
Generally, if I claim a recipe as my own, it's something I wrote. A recipe is more than just a list of ingredients. It's the techniques used, the order in which they're done and the duration. It's the added instructions that might be given as insight.
Take something like scones. There have got to be a zillion recipes for scones out there but how all those ingredients are incorporated, how they're shaped, etc. has all to do with the success or failure of the recipe.
The only recipe I call "mine" whose origin is from another source is my zillion grain bread. It was such a flawed recipe that my incarnation is nearly unrecognizable from the "original." Several major components in ingredients, rising time, etc. were omitted from the original and I basically took a list of ingredients, added to them and made up my own procedure.
I say if you want to enter contests, go for it!
chiff0nade at 10:33AM on 03/12/08
Here is one more, from the Accidental Hedonist:
http://www.accidentalhedonist.com/index.php/2006/08/07/copyrights_and_recipes
Traveller at 10:37AM on 03/12/08
We talked about this before every recipe was at one time in concept alone written in some way someplace else. Can anyone claim all pancakes? No they cannot. If I take chiff's recipe for pancakes and I replace the milk with apple sauce and the baking powder with baking soda add a pinch of cinnamon and use my own syrup the resulting assembled recipe is mine.
adapted v. tr.
To make suitable to or fit for a specific use or situation.
Once you adapt a recipe and you change any combination of ingredients or any of the technique it is now yours.
If we all made a blueberry cheesecake we surely are going to use some of the same ingredients, we surely are going to change out a few and we going to use different techniques.
The key to the actual intellectual property is this did you take it and profit from it? Can it be proven?
As for recipes in publishing or on blogs there is no way I am going to go to a blog and print out a recipe and (98% of the time) do it exactly like you do.
I am far too much a tinkerer. If you say put in 4 tablespoons of sugar; I have already figured the chemistry and started tearing it apart. Many of you cook and bake like me. You adapt everything.
When I formulate a recipe on my own I share it. And I often do make my own. Anyone knows when you make a recipe elements of it came from someplace or someone else. You like the amount this serves, the body of that, the height of this, the flavor combination of that. There are basic formulas to baking and sauces. You can play with the formula all you like but somehow you will affect it and effect it and make it yours.
JerzeeTomato at 1:04PM on 03/12/08
I would imagine that if you came up with a completely new type of food involving a completely new cooking device that nobody had ever used before, you could probably patent it. Like if I made a machine that lowers eggs into the mouths of open volcanos to cook them.
But almost all recipes are essentially variations on a theme. There are certainly ethical implications to trying to publish re-worded recipes that you stole from other cooks, but attempting to replicate something you ate in a restaurant is very different. Any recipe that you figured out on your own is yours. Any recipe that you altered significantly from the original is also yours. The best chefs don't reinvent the wheel every time they cook.
schwartz at 10:32AM on 03/13/08
I'm so glad I asked! Thanks!
JojoK at 3:28PM on 03/13/08
Re-worded is not what recipes are. Maybe songs but not recipes. If someone changes the ingredients and the technique its another recipe all together.
If I like blueberry cheesecake and I use the crust from one recipe that I like but add pecans to it. I use half ricotta and half cream cheese which I change from another recipe, I use 6 eggs instead of 4 and pinch of cinnamon and top it with a lemon curd from another recipe but whip some sour cream into it. It is not any one of those recipes its now mine.
Jerzee's Blueberry Cheesecake with Lemon Curd Sour Cream and pecan crust. I can publish this because it is mine. And any one of the cookbook authors might say hey I had a blueberry cheesecake recipe but its not like that. I often tinker with recipes. One you tinker and alter it, its not the original at all. Now I should go write down this recipe I made for an example I used here, it sounds good.
JerzeeTomato at 3:32AM on 03/15/08
I was very interested in reading your post as I have recently entered the whole recipe contest arena. I have been reading a lot and learning a lot as well. So far, one of the best sites that I have come across is Recipe Carousel. They have a great listing of 2008 recipe contests along with prizes available. They also have a blog and various recipes. Just thought i would share this info with you all. I haven't been able to find any definitive information on the copyright thing though. Good luck!
entertowin at 4:59PM on 03/21/08
Remember these are recipe writing contests, not just recipe contests.
Writing a recipe that's clear, concise, and easy to follow, so that a majority of cooks with various degrees of skill and equipment can produce approximations of the dish you describe is not as easy as it seems.
srhcb at 5:09PM on 03/21/08