Today, I thought I’d share with you one of my favorite recipes, which is actually a recipe that my friend, Jennifer, shared with me a long time ago. It is my Apple Crumb Pie recipe, and I think it is actually why my husband married me. Not to brag, but it is the best apple pie I’ve ever tasted, and now I share it with you.
Apple Crumb Pie
Ingredients:
For pie:
6-8 apples
1 9 in. unbaked refrigerated pie crust
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp lemon juice, if using red delicious apples
1/4 c brown sugar
1/4 c white sugar
For crumb topping mixture:
1/2 c white sugar
3/4 c flour
1/3 c butter, softened
Preparation:
Wash, peel, and cube apples. Mix cinnamon and sugars and combine with apples. Add to pie crust. Mix together crumb topping ingredients with a fork until crumbly. Place over top of apples. Bake at 400 degrees for 40 minutes or until top is golden brown. Serve with vanilla ice cream.
Strangely, I recently found a very similar recipe in one of my favorite cookbooks – Don’t Panic, Dinner’s in the Freezer. http://www.amazon.com/Dont-Panic-Dinners-Freezer-Great-Tasting/dp/0800730550 This, combined with the fact that I’ve been passing the recipe off as my own for about 14 years now, made me think: When does a recipe become yours? I’m sure I’ve changed a few things in the recipe (for example, I never use lemon juice because I always use gala or fugi apples, and occasionally I use less flour and add oats to the toping mixture), but it’s still basically the same as the one that Jen gave me so long ago. I am still the one making the pie, so I am using the recipe, but does that make it my recipe? The US
My other thought is, does it even matter if a recipe is yours or not? There’s an episode of Friends where Phoebe decides to give Monica her grandmother’s chocolate-chip cookie recipe as an engagement present but realizes it has been burned up in a fire. They try to figure out the secret recipe only to realize that they are Nestle Tollhouse cookies and hilarity ensues. I’m curious how many of our grandmothers are passing off Nestle Tollhouse cookies as their secret recipes, and how many of us care? If the cookies are delicious and come from someone you love, does it really matter if they pulled the recipe out of their own clever mind or off the back of a bag of chocolate chips? I will post more about secret recipes next week, but in the meantime, can somebody tell me if I need to repent and stop lying about my pie recipe?
From Brent:
ReplyDeleteThis reminds me of a fun article regarding copyright infringement accusations made against Jessica Seinfeld arising out of her development of a cookbook designed to trick children into eating veggies, http://www.slate.com/id/2176563/
As I understand it, the short, unfun legal answer is that the list of ingredients in a recipe, no matter how original, can never be subject to copyright protection. The ingredients are considered bare-bones factual information; facts are not subject to copyright protection.
This being said, the nonfactual elements contained in your blog posting -- such as the anecdotes accompanying the recipe -- are entitled to copyright protection. A photograph of the pie would also be subject to copyright protection. If you were to use elaborate, non-standard ingredient descriptors (e.g., "red, lucious, juicy fuji apples" instead of just "fuji apples") the combination of these unique elements might be eligible for copyright protection. Then again, doing so could detract from the utility of the recipe. Also there may be thin copyright protection for the description of how to assemble the ingredients into the pie. Thus, someone could paraphrase how to make your pie, but could not copy your wording verbatim.
If anything, trade secret law would probably provide the greatest protection for recipies, but only if you actually keep the recipes secret -- no blog postings :). This is why KFC zealously guards the list of various herbs and spices in its fried chicken recipe (same with the formula for the Coca-Cola softdrink).
From Joe:
ReplyDeleteAs you say, a trade secret is only entitled to protection until it becomes
publicly known--advertently, inadvertently, or illicitely:
http://www.livescience.com/12901-leaked-coca-cola-coke-recipe.html
Plus, what good is a recipe if you leave out an ingredient or a procedure?
If you really want protection for a formula or recipe, patent it. Of
course, there may be some difficulty convincing the Examiner of the utility
of one more recipe for pie, or the novelty of adding a quarter-teaspoon of
cardamom instead of nutmeg, or the unobviousness of substituting mangos for
a third of the apples. Then again, perhaps there is a patentable algorithm
for calculating the quantity of standardized vinegar to be added, based on
the pH of the apples and/or the approximate sugar content (based on
specific gravity).
Of course, the patent is only good for 20 years, and you have to enforce it
yourself against all of the church ladies who do USPTO searches for apple
pie formulations.
An interesting question; not being an attorney, I can't give you a "legal"
ReplyDeleteanswer, so I'll ask Brent to judge my layman's interpretation.
First of all, there are several relevant references on the Copyright site;
the first one is: http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl122.html It says, in
part, "Copyright law does not protect recipes that are mere listings of
ingredients. Nor does it protect other mere listings of ingredients such as
those found in formulas, compounds, or prescriptions. Copyright protection
may, however, extend to substantial literary expression—a description,
explanation, or illustration, for example—that accompanies a recipe or
formula or to a combination of recipes, as in a cookbook."
Another reference on the site says, "How do I protect my recipe?
A mere listing of ingredients is not protected under copyright law.
However, where a recipe or formula is accompanied by substantial literary
expression in the form of an explanation or directions, or when there is a
collection of recipes as in a cookbook, there may be a basis for copyright
protection. Note that if you have secret ingredients to a recipe that you
do not wish to be revealed, you should not submit your recipe for
registration, because applications and deposit copies are public records.
See FL 122, Recipes (which is referenced above)."
It goes on to say, "Only original works of authorship are protected by
copyright. “Original” means that an author produced a work by his or her
own intellectual effort instead of copying it from an existing work."
The way I see it, what makes a recipe "yours" is the effort you put into
it. Do you vary the ingredients--margarine for butter, stevia for sugar,
cider vinegar for lemon juice (perfectly legitimate in an apple pie, by the
way), or a combination of rice flour plus potato flour plus xanthan gum
instead of wheat flour--or mixing order, or baking conditions? When you
write it down, don't you add a little story about where you first acquired
the recipe (attribution might be construed as acknowledgement of
derivatization, however), or that it bonded Jake forever to you; or maybe
you assembled it into a collection of "Desserts Made with Love". That
makes it "yours." (Or perhaps your hire Lucas to take food pictures to
accompany each recipe--it's still yours, because you commissioned the
photos, and therefore the photos are a "work made for hire" and the
authorship is still yours. Or perhaps you write the recipes, and Jake
takes the photos, and you are joint authors--that makes it "vos".
(from Joe)
Don't forget the year "your" apple pie saved Thanksgiving after I screwed up the pumpkin dessert! It's still the best apple pie I've ever eaten.
ReplyDeleteThis reminds me of a story that I read where alchemists deliberately misprinted formulas to keep their work private.
ReplyDeleteI had forgotten about this apple pie, and am plotting to make it now...
For the record, I think a recipe becomes "yours" (in a non legal way) when it is requested from you. For example, "Could you bring that apple pie you brought last year?"