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Roula Khalaf, editor -in -chief of the FT, selects her favorite stories in this weekly newsletter.
The writer is an author of fiction, cooking books and poetry anthologies. Her The last book is `The Dinner Table '', a collection of food writing
Too many cooks spoil the broth, but what about Baklava? Chaos in the kitchen this week, as two Australian chefs, both selected for a prestigious kitchen book price, claim to have designed an identical recipe for dessert. Also, caramel slice. (And, lightens a third chef, isn't that my recipe for the vanilla cake?))
It is difficult for me to imagine a recipe for baklava, caramel slice or vanilla cake which is so surprisingly original that I would undoubtedly know that it was mine. You can only combine milk, sugar and eggs in many ways to get the same result. Again, Masterchef UK fans will remember the horror of the competitor's humility which stupidly presented Marcus Wareing with a pie of pastry cream Marcus.
If you read a lot of recipes, you are starting to notice models. I cannot count the number of people I have watched and made, halfway from the list of ingredients, that the figures were simply doubled and changed metrics in Imperial (or vice versa), and I know because it is a recipe that I have already read elsewhere.
Listen: I understand. Each editor of cooking books that I know likes to read cooking books. And if you cook a lot, it is difficult to know exactly which bit came from which friend, which book, which random blog or an old half -forgotten television program. There are millions of online recipes and someone probably had the same idea as you are along the line. Looking for Google, find theirs, and what then? You don't try their technique to see if it's better than yours? And if so, you don't write that and follow it?
Originality is difficult to find in a world as large and as small as ours. I can think of maybe 15 really original recipes that I have read in the past 10 years. All the others I loved – and there have been many – I could probably find the source. Theoretically, a person could draw a huge card of influence, inspiration, imitation – and, yes, probably plagiarism too – of each cook who has already cooked.
Which is all the point.
This special row above the baklava looks a bit like a storm in a cupcake. (Now theres An original idea.) But the principle is worth reflecting. It is both indefensible and indefensibly stupid to copy a gram of recipe for the gram of a direct competitor – especially when the credit is so easy.
Open almost any modern kitchen book, and you will trip sooner or later in a recipe attributed to another chef. Usually – ideally – the attribution will guarantee the original cook with praise, explain why exactly this recipe is so good and encourages you to buy the book. This is one of the things that I like most in cooking books: by buying a hardback of £ 26, I also receive a list of reading what to cook and to trust.
In a world where Chatgpt can design you a whole new weekly menu, it is difficult not to wonder what we are doing, the culinary writers of this world. You can get a recipe anywhere, for anything, for free. Why buy a kitchen book, unless you really trust the writer? Why buy a kitchen book at all, except because you have a link with the writer that no artificial intelligence can never reproduce? And if you are the writer, why not share your own connections?
The real threat to the original writing is not the other, it is the wholesale plagiarism of the AI, and the only way to fight against a neural network is to create a robust and thoughtful network. Me, in my kitchen; you, in yours; Everyone who taught me to cook, all over the world, in theirs.
It seems unlikely that one of the chiefs in question found a recipe for Baklava – an idea of the 15th century – which owed anything to their culinary ancestors. How more is it more miraculous to realize than over hundreds of years and thousands of kilometers, we all hope for a touch of the same sweetness? And how softer to recognize it?
