Elizabeth Hughs plagiarized recipes from Sharon Wee's Singaporean-dish cookbook, Growing Up in a Nonya Kitchen. As Wee came to this realization, she took her outrage to the 'authorities' and contacted Bloomsbury, the publishing house behind Makan, which is the book that took recipes from Growing Up in a Nonya Kitchen. Bloomsbury was cooperative and unshelved Makan immediately, citing "rights issues"; Hughs averted commenting on the matter, and Sharon Wee declined interviews.

However, there is a backdrop that many noticed and addressed as the story circulated on social media: How should one deal with 'recipe plagiarism'? The New York Times provided laws, opinions, and cases in their article, Who Owns a Recipe? A Plagiarism Claim Has Cookbook Authors Asking. 

Copyright laws in the United States and Britain could protect cookbook authors to a very limited extent, but not much can be done when it comes to the actual recipes. 

Experts weighed in on the issue, "It is more of an ethical issue than it is a legal issue,” said Lynn Oberlander, a US media lawyer. On the other hand, the owner of a Manhattan cookbook shop, Bonnie Slotnick, like many others, said that the entire genre of recipe writing is transferred, paralleled, and overlapped, “The whole history of American cookbook publishing is based on borrowing and sharing." 

The history and the law

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Deemed as one of the US' first cookbooks, American Cookery, written by Amelia Simmons, was published in 1796 and is full of recipes taken from British cookbooks. White colonizers stole Black cooks' recipes and claimed them as their own; James Beard, a renowned cookbook writer, also took recipes from his colleagues and published them under his name - without citing them. 

However, with time, cookbook authors have grown sensitive when it came to taking recipes. In 1996, Meredith Corporation accused a publishing company of taking recipes from its book, “Discover Dannon: 50 Fabulous Recipes With Yogurt.” The lawsuit which was filed against the company was lost, simply for the reason that copyrights didn't apply to recipes. 

The law does not protect such a concept for the reason that it views recipes as evergreen "facts", with instructions rather than a creative process. 

However, Sara Hawkins, a US business and intellectual property lawyer, said that introductions, photography, and designs, and even the particular order of content that complements the recipes in the cookbook can be protected by the law. She continues to say that if the instructions were written creatively, or "with enough literary flourish," there may be some reconsideration for copyright laws to cover recipes. 

Racism, class, and cuisine

Some cookbook authors would rather keep the knowledge to themselves than have other more famous and renowned authors take the credit for the recipes. 

“When you feel like your stories, your work, your investment ends up benefiting people who are already higher up in the hierarchy of fame, it tempts me to go to a place I don’t want to go, which is to hoard knowledge,” said Leela Punyaratabandhu, an author of three Southeast Asian cookbooks.

Coming from Thailand, Punyaratabandhu said she feels vulnerable as a Thai author since she is consistently ascribed to the assumption that her recipes are handed over to her because of her ethnicity, whereas White people are considered 'scholars' when they author ethnic cookbooks. 

"I spent the time and expense testing the recipes to come up with what I think is the best formula. My role has been reduced to just the translator,” she said. But when a White author publishes Thai recipes, “these people are considered scholars because they come from a different culture.”