Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Presidential Recipe Purloining
Apparently we have another ongoing cooking plagiarism scandal, this time in the presidential campaign. For the second time, John McCain's wife Cindy has been accused of passing on a recipe taken from another source. This time, the July 2008 issue of Family Circle ran cookie recipes from each candidate's spouse. Someone found that McCain's recipe was virtually identical ("a few minor details" changed) to one on Hersheys.com. In the article, she had attributed the recipe to a friend, and I certainly can see how it would be easy for someone to take a recipe, maybe make some changes, and then put it into a recipe file, not even remembering the original source. There is also the point that a lot of cooking, particularly baking, relies on rations dictated by chemistry.
When I was writing my pizza book, I developed a dough recipe - and eventually learned (long before going to print) that one of my favorite bread books had the identical recipe. I didn't start with that recipe as a reference. Instead, I just put stuff together until it looked and felt right. But there are only so many ratios of flour to water to salt that will give you a particular result. (However, I did mention the unintended similarity in the book - and also heartily recommended the other title, Secrets of a Jewish Baker, which is definitely worth finding used if you like to bake bread.)
So, my sympathy was with Cindy McCain - until I read about the first time this happened in April. John McCain's campaign web site had a number of "her" recipes posted, when someone noticed that many appeared identical to recipes taken from the Food Network's web site. (Really, how many people come up with a passion fruit mousse?) The campaign eventually blamed an unpaid intern, which raises the question of how this person was sent off to find recipes that would be posted as coming from Cindy McCain. If it was a blunder, didn't any of the McCains notice that something was wrong? Or maybe passion fruit is considered a common ingredient in Arizona. And doesn't your family make ahi tuna with napa cabbage slaw or farfalle pasta with turkey sausage, peas and mushrooms? I thought so.
So much for sympathy. By the way, did I tell you about my new cookie recipe?
When I was writing my pizza book, I developed a dough recipe - and eventually learned (long before going to print) that one of my favorite bread books had the identical recipe. I didn't start with that recipe as a reference. Instead, I just put stuff together until it looked and felt right. But there are only so many ratios of flour to water to salt that will give you a particular result. (However, I did mention the unintended similarity in the book - and also heartily recommended the other title, Secrets of a Jewish Baker, which is definitely worth finding used if you like to bake bread.)
So, my sympathy was with Cindy McCain - until I read about the first time this happened in April. John McCain's campaign web site had a number of "her" recipes posted, when someone noticed that many appeared identical to recipes taken from the Food Network's web site. (Really, how many people come up with a passion fruit mousse?) The campaign eventually blamed an unpaid intern, which raises the question of how this person was sent off to find recipes that would be posted as coming from Cindy McCain. If it was a blunder, didn't any of the McCains notice that something was wrong? Or maybe passion fruit is considered a common ingredient in Arizona. And doesn't your family make ahi tuna with napa cabbage slaw or farfalle pasta with turkey sausage, peas and mushrooms? I thought so.
So much for sympathy. By the way, did I tell you about my new cookie recipe?
Labels: plagiarism, politics, recipes
