Leather Storrs: Hijacking Recipes in the Food Community
Tuesday, February 17, 2015
Sure, original thought is not nearly as common as people would like to believe and of course I’m not the first person to put two slices of bread together in a toaster, but the coincidence was unsettling. And it got me thinking about innovation and ownership within the food community.
Ownership of recipes has always been a sticky issue. Jaded chefs will tweak an existing formula infinitesimally and label it their own. This practice, derided by most of us, is nevertheless an accepted facet of the industry. Another technique, best employed by James Beard, is to attribute credit while simultaneously owning a recipe by virtue of printing it under your own by-line. Beard’s books are filled with folksy anecdotes of Mrs. Bentley’s buttermilk biscuits or Dr. Charrington’s standing rib roast. I suspect Dr. Charrington received no royalties.
Beard, however, was less than charitable with his own formulas and was swift in exacting revenge. My first cooking teacher was a man named Richard Nelson who had been an assistant of Beards for many years. He published only one book and like Beard, his focus was Americana. In his collection of recipes he included dishes he had done with Beard and did not (according to the big man) properly acknowledge the inspiration. Beard disowned him and spoke frequently and publicly about Nelson’s treachery. While not ruined, Nelson retreated from the public eye and only started teaching again in earnest after Beard’s death.
Cooking, like anything worth doing, is about perfecting your craft and continuing to learn. I tell young cooks to “build their bag of tricks,” by which I mean steal everything you can from every chef for whom you work! Only by collating and processing the various recipes, techniques and secrets you learn through your travels can you hope to develop your own style.
In support of sharing and learning in the kitchen I have always been an open book. I love to teach and I’ll happily give recipes to anyone, cook or customer. I should probably extend that policy to my writing. And I suppose I’d say the same thing to the Huff Post as I do to the recipients of our recipes: Here you go, but you won’t do it like us.
Related Articles
- Leather Storrs: 2015’s Biggest Restaurant Openings
- Leather Storrs: Confessions of a Reality TV Chef
- Leather Storrs: How Russia Can Teach Us to Enjoy a Meal
- Leather Storrs: How To Play With Your Food (And Not Get Burned)
- Leather Storrs: How TV Influences our Changing Food Culture
- Leather Storrs: So You Want to be a Chef . . .
- Leather Storrs: The Church of Inner Toast
- Leather Storrs: The Wrong Way to Write a Menu
- Leather Storrs: Why Guinea Pigs Are A Perfect Protein
- Leather Storrs: Why Italy is the ‘Bull’ of Food
- Leather Storrs: Why Portlanders Need to Pay Up at Restaurants
- Leather Storrs: Why Restaurants Should Get Rid of Tipping
Follow us on Pinterest Google + Facebook Twitter See It Read It