Recipe Ownership, Inspiration, Credit...oh my!

What makes a recipe yours? Where is the line drawn between inspiration and ownership?

These questions have been my biggest barriers to starting this blog. This fear is probably rooted in a mix of imposter syndrome in my own creativity, grievances I have with creators not subtly copying the work of others, and the growing call in the culinary community for people to better contextualize food while cooking. 

Let's look at an example, cherry tomato confit. I have a “recipe” for this up on my Instagram but a single search for cherry tomato confit pulls up 949,000 results. So, one can presume there are thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of variations of this recipe — not to mention those that are held in recipe boxes and passed down through generations, not to be found on the internet.

So who owns a recipe? Who should get credit for a special combination of ingredients? Should anyone?

Spoiler, I don’t know the answer to this, however, I do feel it’s important to raise the question. Even if we can’t come to a consensus, we should at least think about a better way to approach the question. 

Looking again at the cherry tomato confit example. Confit is a French cooking technique that involves slowly cooking and preserving something in oil. A more detailed background on confit can be found in this Serious Eats article. 

does understanding the background and technique of confit and applying it to cherry tomatoes make it a recipe?

Then, if it does, does it then become your recipe when you add whole garlic cloves and thyme to your version? What then happens with the version from the Food Network that uses minced garlic instead of whole cloves and adds in red pepper flakes; is this a totally new recipe or just a special variation?

In my opinion, no, this is the same recipe entirely. However, we could also wonder if something as generic as cherry tomato confit is essentially a recipe that’s been released to the public domain, similar to other creative works, like a song or a book, whose copyright has run out. If so, would it be wrong to put your “version” out into the world without providing this context? 

We are in this strange time where a recipe will take over the online narrative.

within 24 hours, bloggers, chefs, and food media publications will be posting about that same recipe with one or two ingredients changed and little to no acknowledgment of the inspiration or original recipe that led them there. I have to wonder what it would look like if recipes were held to the same standards as research papers. Where people cite their sources and give credit to the foundation upon which their recipes sits. As someone who creates, I understand the need to claim something as your own and have a strong grip on your identity. 

Now, with all these questions swirling around, you might be asking what could better look like?

Unfortunately, I’m really not sure. On one hand, I don’t want to bind the creativity of cooking to the rigor of academia, as opposed to what my citation rant above might suggest. Yet, without a better system or higher expectations, the noise from creators shouting only their own names will become deafening. 

Recipes are often tied to the person or group that made them popular, but that brings up a whole other issue around power dynamics and the creations/cultures of marginalized communities being appropriated. Does the loudest voice get the credit? If not, then does the first? How do you define first (e.g. first blog, written recipe, idea, restaurant dish)? The rabbit hole never ends, however, what I’ve come to is that it's about raising the voices of your predecessors, your inspirations, and your community. 

Food has been, and always will be, at its core, solely about community. So by pretending you and your recipes exist within a vacuum, you are separating yourself from the very essence of cooking. It's on each of us to figure out how we fit into this interconnected world we live in.

I think, for me, it starts with this blog post and acknowledging the dynamic I’m entering into by carving out my own corner of the internet. It then continues, at minimum, with some of the context of the recipe and the sources I viewed for inspiration in the process. For this last part, I’m going to ask for a favor, please please please call me out! It’s too often lofty ideals lose out to time, success, and convenience. Reader, this is a journey we will take together - I’m not sure if we will ever have an answer that satisfies everyone, but we will be much better off for trying.