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I seldom follow recipes exactly. If I want to make a specific dish I've never made before, I'll find several versions and pull what I want from each. So at that point, I couldn't credit it to any particular book or cook.

But I don't really think of them as my own until I've tweaked them to the point where I don't need any recipe except maybe for broad instructions.

Jason Perlow from Off the broiler posted this and I found it very good info.
http://vimeo.com/3630682?pg=transcoded_embed&sec=3630682
Copyright and recipe intellectual property verbage from a law firm.

If I make lots of changes to an original recipe, then it's mine. If I don't then it's theirs. As example, I make Rao's marinara sauce all the time, but with a bit less oil and a bit more salt. It still belongs to them. I also make a very tasty Beef Bourguignon that started out from Joy of Cooking, but over the years has been modified to not being even recognizable as theirs, so it's mine, all mine.

Realistically, almost every "new" recipe comes from another recipe that's been tweaked.

I guess it sort of comes down to whether a recipe just influences me (like, "hmmm, neat idea to mix chicken and sausage,"[ belongs to me]) or whether I follow the bulk of their ingredients/prep (theirs).

Derosa, the magic number 3 is how cooking contests filter out entries. They can google a recipe you've entered, like Tuna Casserole, and see other recipes with the same name, and read through the recipes. If you've simply copied someone else's recipe and sent it in, your Tuna Casserole will be quickly eliminated. If your recipe is similar, but at least 3 ingredients are different from all the others, you may get the nod to move ahead in the contest.

all recipes are really just varients of another. so I'd say recipies don't belong to anyone. just my two cents
and like onepercent99 said, it really doesnt matter at all

I agree with onepercent and adanson. Does it really matter?

If it doesn't matter to you then do what you want when you want, just don't enter a recipe contest or publish the recipe, use it in a menu or post here stating that it is yours. I use the terms based on recipe by xxxx, adapted from a recipe from ex.Joy of Cooking, a recipe I created with input from xxx but always giving credit where credit is due.

3 ingredients has always been the magic number and can be as small as the percentage of fat in the milk or as vast as your imagination takes you.

I highly recommend you watch the link I posted (from Jason@ off the broiler) about the protection of recipes http://vimeo.com/3630682?pg=transcoded_embed&sec=3630682 (at the 10:20 time mark)
It states that legally you cannot copyright ingredients or the combining of them, just the language in which you use to convey the recipe.
So there you have it. No one owns potato salad ffs, or pancakes or your granny's apple cake that she adapted from Betty Crocker. But if you publish it and include a pic of you and Granny making it and describe how you and granny made it with a nice little story then it's yours and probably protected.

@ those who feel it doesn't matter - I disagree. I submitted a recipe to Bon Ap once and they responded by saying, "we'd like to change this to that, this to that, and this to that." The thing was barely recognizable as my recipe. I thanked them for their interest but was clear in my instruction, "If you can't use the recipe in its full integrity, please refrain from using it." Ironically, Gourmet printed that very same recipe with no changes at all.

When I prepare a recipe someone else made up (published or not) then change a few things, that's not my recipe. When I create a dish using ingredients I chose, assembled and recorded; techniques I employed to execute the dish and the order in which to apply them, make no mistake, that recipe is mine.

Thank you, dbcurrie. Not only is your comment thoughtful, it's right on target.

One of my favorite baking recipes calls for a certain commercial applesauce, but when I make it I use my own homemade, unsweetened applesauce, which is different every time because the apples I use are different every time.

I have pretty high standards for saying that something is my own recipe; usually I'll just say that I found this recipe in such-and-such a place but I made a change or two. But having read some of what's been written on the intellectual-property issue, I think this issue of recipes as intellectual property is just one aspect of the commodification of culture and the shrinking public domain. And I'm sure that corporations--many of them--would like to change the public's thought patterns so that people think of who legally owns what as naturally as they speak or breathe.

Something similar happened in a Buzzflash story early in the GWB years, in which the author repeated a Rumsfeld joke (very funny IMO) and asked almost plaintively who wrote the joke. That's the wrong question to ask; jokes are folklore.

And so, in a way, are recipes. At least they used to be, as folksongs used to be.

@mimiqueens, I have to wonder how far back you have to go before recipes are folklore. The ones that get handed down from mother to daughter still exist, but we've digressed to talk about published recipes, which could be in print, online, or both. I'd venture to say that a hundred years ago, published recipes were better protected than they are today, because there was no means for mass distribution by the common folk. Sure, you could write a recipe on a piece of paper and hand it to your neighbor, but you couldn't post it online and distribute it to thousands of your best friends in the first hour.

I've heard the same argument in favor of free distribution for a variety of intellectual properties, including music, software, art...but the problem is that if all these things can be freely distributed, there's no incentive for the musician, writer or artist to keep producing. You mention the corporations wanting to keep hold of the properties, but behind those corporations are the individual artists who created those works and hope to make money from them.

Legalities aside, if you base your recipe off of someone else's, it's proper (and polite) to give credit. If you change enough things, it's fine to say that it's your version of the recipe that was inspired by someone else's work. At some point, enough things have changed that it's no longer recognizable as the original, it's still nice to give credit for the inpiration.

Of course, all this depends on the actual conversation. If someone says, "I love your brownies," you don't need to go into a disclaimer about the origin of the recipe if that's not where the conversation is headed. If you give them a recipe and it's not your own creation, it's best to tell them where it came from, if only because they might want to buy the book or read the blog.

Since the actual list of ingredients isn't copyrightable, the bigger issue is the instructions. And in some cases the instructions are what make a recipe interesting, appealing, or understandable. Particularly when the recipe relies a lot on technique, a clear description of how to do something may be the thing that makes the recipe succeed for someone. That particular wording is the part that belongs to the writer.

I think it depends in part, for me, on the originality and creativity of the original recipe. If it's a recipe for, say, lemon curd, every recipe pretty much looks alike, and I'll claim it if it's become my recipe (because chances are I've forgotten the original source. If it's a recipe for something more original in either technique or flavor pairing, I'll give credit where credit is due, even if I'm adapting it. An adaptation is mine probably if there are three changes, like someone else said.

If you get lots of compliments on it and people don't already know what cookbook it came from, then its yours. ;)

I use the "oblivious husband" test. If I've made a recipe over and over, add one new ingredient or take one away, and get the WOW from him - it's mine. It takes just the right touch for him to notice a difference in a meal!

Isn't it more than just ingredients, but also technique? Like, for example, getting better soft ccc by melting the butter, or in another recipe, separating the eggs rather than adding them whole...I'm sure some of you can think of even better examples.

Lots of great recipes attributed to chefs, even Julia Child, began as part of the culture, but they became that chef's own because, instead of just 'a pinch of this and a pinch of that' learned from a grandmother, the recipe author found a way to enable most cooks who followed the directions to replicate the recipe.

There are a lot of things you can lay claim to. For example, you could invent a completely new dish. Give it a name. "Stu." It's your creation from start to finish.

But for things like pizza, no one can claim they invented it. However, a recipe writer could come up with a interesting formula for the sauce and some new twists on making the dough, and that's his/her recipe for pizza that could be published in a book or on a blog.

A pizzaria, on the other hand, might not consider it "their" pizza unless it was the same recipe, the same techniques, and the same equipment, so the the result is the pizza that is served at that particular restaurant. If someone stole the formula, it wouldn't be the same because the methods and equipment would be different.

A home cook's "own" pizza might be someone else's basic recipe, but tweaked with a few interesting toppings, maybe including some local cheeses that aren't widely available. This may not be enough to claim it as a new recipe, but the cook cook claim it as his/her personal version of the recipe.

Or it could be entirely someone else's ingredients, but the method might make it unique. Since ingredients aren't copyrightable, someone could write up this earthshaking new method for pizza-making, and it could be a whole new generation of pizza.

Or, it could be "my" pizza, as in, "That's MY slice of pizza, so keep your grubby paws off if it."

twosavoie, that's my attitude exactly. That's why I have relatively few recipes that are both complex and unmistakably mine. If I take something to church fellowship that people enjoy, and that is from a published source with at the most two tweaks, I'll say, oh, this is from Mark Bittman, or this is from Good Housekeeping.

Yeah, dbcurrie, I'll have to backtrack on that folklore thing, but what it does look like are two thought patterns, or ethics, or sets of assumptions vying for normativeness. It's the ethic of openness and mutual enrichment that you find among librarians and among academics who are not funded by corporations, and the ethic of competitiveness and secrecy that you find in the business world.

People do talk about "my" strawberry pie or "my" plum cake, and I like to give credit where it's due, if only to correct any mistaken impression that the recipe is substantially my invention. If the recipe is so far from its original inspiration that it's essentially mine, I feel less of an obligation to talk about the recipes that inspired it, but if the subject comes up, I do.

CC/CI/ATK has a particular axe to grind. Its particular selling point is that it has found the perfect recipe, and that all other recipes, whether from Allrecipes members or from Betty Crocker or from Jean-Georges Vongerichten, are shots in the dark. It's selling access to the Holy Grail. Its no-modifying policy is part of that claim. Since any change from perfection is a change for the worse (just ask Plato), to claim to have improved on an ATK recipe is to implicitly accuse ATK of false advertising.

Dbcurrie's in the right direction, legally speaking, but maybe not assertive enough: You cannot own a recipe, only the language used in its publication. If I take a CI recipe, with the same ingredients and use different language to describe the technique, they cannot sue me. If I take a dish from a restaurant--even its signature dish (eg., a simple fried seasoned chicken breast sandwich on a buttered bun with 2 slices of pickle)--and serve the exact same thing in my restaurant, they cannot sue me. (I would, however, be a jackass, which is probably more to the original post's point.)

However, if I also served identical waffle cut fries, chicken nuggets, lemonade, and carrot salad, and if I used barely literate cows in my advertising, they could sue me, but that would be trademark infringement.

I'm not sure, other than lawsuits and contests, why it really matters. When most people say a dish is "yours," it's because it's something you've made frequently or successfully enough that they associate it with you. Nonetheless, unless you make a big deal about it, I would guess that most people assume there was a recipe involved.

If someone compliments your shoes, do you struggle with the fact that you neither designed nor manufactured them?

I think of a recipe as my own once I've made it enough that I can do it without looking at a written recipe.

maybe seeing it printed out by hand or in a book makes it so-and-so's recipe, but if I'm seeing it in my head, I figure it's my own.

You don't even have to be a cook for the recipe to be yours. The recipe can be yours if it's one of your favorite foods, even if your mother always fixes it for you and is identical in every respect to a recipe printed in a cookbook. It is "Joe's cake" if it's the one you like most. That doesn't mean you own the copyright. And owning the copyright doesn't mean you own the recipe - it means the words describing the recipe (but not the list of ingredients) were created by you, and you can prevent someone else from using those same words in describing that recipe. You cannot copyright a list (famous U.S. Supreme Court case involving the telephone directory), which is why the list of ingredients cannot be copyrighted. But if you use the same words in describing a recipe, you've violated somebody else's copyright.

Whether or not you 'own' the recipe should have no bearing on accepting compliments when you cook something that people liked - you still made it happen.

Like art, good technique is one thing, but artistry cannot be explained. Good food comes from an unknowable convergence of time, place, luck, personality, hardship, friendship, sunshine, stories, lies, drunkenness (on behalf of the artist and/or the appreciators), insanity, lust, knives, pots...

When I finished cooking school in California I started making up chicken recipes and naming them after relatives and friends, like chicken David. Most were excellent and I considered them mine and the person it was named after. I probably have done 40 -50 personalized recipes. I think my next group will have to be sea food. When I create a recipe it's mine!

I learned alot of "recipes" from my Italian mother. When friends ask me for a recipe, its difficult to write it down because I am uncertain about the measurements, so sometimes I look for published recipes that are similar and try to adapt the measurements to what I make. Now I wonder who does this recipe belong to?????