Unlock the editor’s summary for free
Roula Khalaf, editor of the FT, selects her favorite stories in this weekly newsletter.
The writer is the author of fiction, kitchen books and poetry anthologies. His The last book is ‘The Dinner Table’, a food writing collection
Too many chefs spoil the broth, but what about Baklava? Chaos in the kitchen this week, like two Australian chefs, both preselected for a prestigious cookbook award, claim to have devised an identical recipe for dessert. In addition, the caramel portion. (And, a third chef alleges, isn’t that my recipe for vanilla cake?)
It is difficult for me to imagine a recipe for Baklava, slice of caramel or vanilla cake that is so surprisingly original that it would know, without a doubt, that it was mine. You can only combine milk, sugar and eggs in many ways to obtain the same result. On the other hand, Masterchef UK fans will remember with the horror the humiliating of the contestant who foolishly presented Marcus Wareing with a cream wareing cream cake.
If you read many recipes, you begin to notice patterns. I can’t tell how many I have looked and realized, in the way to the list of ingredients, that the numbers have simply doubled and changed from metric to imperial (or vice versa), and I know because it is a recipe that I have already read in another place.
Listen: I understand. Each cookbook writer I know love to read cooking books. And if you cook a lot, it is difficult to know exactly what bit came from which friend, what a book, what a random blog or an old half -forgotten television program. There are millions of recipes online and someone has probably had the same idea as you somewhere on the line. Google Google yours, you find yours, and then? Don’t you try your technique to see if it is better than yours? And if so, don’t you write that and follow?
Originality is difficult to find in a world as big and as small as ours. I can think of perhaps 15 truly original recipes that I have read in the last 10 years. All the others I have loved, and there have been many of them, I could probably track the source. Theoretically, a person could draw a huge map of influence, inspiration, imitation, and yes, probably also plagiarism, of each chef who has never cooked.
What is the full point.
This particular row about Baklava feels a bit like a storm in a cake. (Now there ‘s An original idea.) But it is worth thinking about the beginning. It is indefensible and defenselessly stupid copying a gramme recipe for a direct competitor, especially when giving credit is so easy.
Open almost any modern cookbook and sooner or later in a recipe attributed to another chef. In general, ideally, the attribution will guide the original chef with praise, explain why exactly this recipe is so good and encourage you to buy the book. It is one of the things that I like most about cookbooks: when buying a hard return of £ 26, I also get a reading list of what to cook below and who to trust.
In a world where ChatGPT can design a new weekly menu, it is difficult not to wonder what we are doing, food writers in this world. You can get a recipe anywhere, for anything, for free. Why buy a kitchen book, unless you really trust the writer? Why buy a kitchen book, except because it has a connection with the writer that no artificial intelligence can replicate? And if you are the writer, why not share your own connections?
The true threat to the original writing is not the one of each other, it is wholesale plagiarism by AI, and the only way to combat a neural network is to create a robust and reflective network of its own. I, in my kitchen; You, in yours; All who taught me to cook, in all parts of the world, in them.
It seems unlikely that some of the chefs in question arise a recipe for Baklava, an idea of the fifteenth century, which owed nothing to their culinary ancestors. How much more miraculous is to realize that for hundreds of years and thousands of miles, we all expect a touch of the same sweetness? And how much sweeter recognize it?