Caramel slice of heaven, or recipe for disaster?  There has been calamity in the kitchen (or at least, all over social media) as two cooks have a donnybrook over a cookbook – and it’s not a good look.

The rich buffet of available cooking puns aside, various plagiarism accusations have been flung by Nagi Maehashi (author of RecipeTin Eats) at Brooke Bellamy (author of Bake With Brooki), including about a caramel slice recipe Ms Bellamy has published in her Bake with Brooki book.

Ms Maehashi says she wrote that recipe and that Ms Bellamy has plagiarised it in her book – which of course Ms Bellamy denies.  To demonstrate her “evidence”, Ms Maehashi posted the below on her Instagram page:

Interesting (and tasty) … but … it’s caramel slice – even this author can make caramel slice.  So, what rights have been infringed?

Well, original works expressed in a material form may be protected by copyright – so if Maehashi’s recipe is original and she published it first then perhaps she has a point against Bellamy.

The bigger problem is whether the recipe Maehashi published is actually sufficiently “original”.  While those measurements might at first glance seem oddly specific (which might support an argument that it was original), they are individually very common measurement amounts.  Maehashi would need to be able to prove (if she was going to pursue the argument) not only that those measurements in that combination were her original works, but also that the rest of the recipe (such as the ingredients and the method) were also originally hers, and not just some slight tweaks on her part of other well-known recipes and methods.

Maybe this is why there is a cry of “plagiarism” instead of “breach of copyright” – plagiarism is not a legal claim as such, but is often more loosely referred to when there has been apparently copying of some parts of a work that might not actually amount to a breach of copyright (which seems to be the case here).

The biggest challenge for cooks in Maehashi’s position to make a legal claim for breach of copyright, even if those precise measurement combinations are hers, is that the rest of the recipe and that method are in fairness pretty well known – that’s simply how you make caramel slices.

Copyright does not protect “ideas” – not even really tasty ones.  Copyright only protects the original expression of those ideas.

If I like my Corn Flakes with precisely 425 mls of milk of a morning, that doesn’t mean I can publish that as my own original Corn Flakes recipe and have copyright protect me.

Perhaps the plagiarism claim has been overbaked?