Posted on 10/30/2023 6:05:28 AM PDT by texas booster
When Danny Meyer was gearing up to open his barbecue restaurant, Blue Smoke, there was one recipe he knew he had to have on the menu: his grandmother’s secret potato salad recipe.
“I told the chef, ‘My very favorite potato salad in the world was the one my grandmother made,’” Meyer recalls.
That’s a big statement coming from Meyer, a successful restaurateur who has earned Michelin Stars and founded the fast-casual chain Shake Shack. At the time, his grandmother had already passed away, but Meyer remembered that she kept recipes on three by five index cards. After a search, he found the right card and handed it to the restaurant’s chef, who invited Meyer to try it in the Blue Smoke kitchen.
When Meyer arrived, the sous chefs had a big bowl of potato salad that brought back memories of his grandmother. He tried it, smiled, and told the chefs, “That’s exactly right.” They grinned back at him mischievously. Eventually, Meyer broke and asked, “What’s so funny?” A chef pulled out a jar of Hellman’s mayonnaise and placed it on the table. Meyer looked at it, then realized that the secret recipe his grandmother had hoarded for years was on the jar. It was the official Hellman’s recipe for potato salad.
This actually seems to be a common phenomenon. The television show Friends even features a similar discovery, when one character, Phoebe, realizes that her grandmother’s “famous” chocolate chip cookie recipe came from a bag of Nestle Toll House chocolate chips.
Two months ago, we asked Gastro Obscura readers to send in accounts of their own discoveries. We promised a (loving) investigation of grandparents lying about family recipes.
(Excerpt) Read more at atlasobscura.com ...
In response to our call, 174 readers wrote in with stories of plagiarized family recipes. Hailing from New York to Nicaragua, from Auckland, New Zealand, to Baghpat, India, they prove that this is a global phenomenon. The majority of readers described devastating discoveries: They found supposedly secret recipes in the pages of famous cookbooks, and heard confessions from parents whose legendary dessert recipes came from the side of Karo Syrup bottles.
Fittingly, one of the most extraordinary examples also echoed the cookie plotline from Friends:
Once I was the judge of a chocolate chip cookie recipe contest. We stipulated that all cookies had to be homemade, no mixes or frozen dough. The top three cookies were chosen, photographed, and presented in a local newspaper along with the recipes for them. Calls and letters poured in pointing out that the first place cookie was the Nestle Toll House recipe and the second place recipe was the Toll House recipe doubled.
–Jeff Miller, Fort Collins, Colorado
Several readers joked about family members threatening to take a secret recipe to the grave. To our surprise, we also received a story of a late-in-life confession:
My uncle was known around town as the “fudge man.” Every year, he would make pounds of it for Christmas parties, bake sales, and gifts. It was legendary—people would beg him for the recipe. When he was ill in the hospital, before he passed, his wife begged him for the recipe so she could keep his memory going. He replied, “It’s on the side of the marshmallow fluff container.”
That’s my favorite fudge recipe.
I add cocoa powder to the standard chocolate chip recipe.
There really was a Duncan Hines that traveled the US and Canada writing up restaurant reviews, during the 1930’s.
His first cookbook was mostly recipes that he enjoyed from these places, provided by the owners.
I used to live in the Washington, DC area.
Many co-workers were Asian and I regret not asking for recipes.
One was an Asian Indian who wanted to open a restaurant. He made dishes that I thought would be readily accepted by Americans.
I still use my Mother’s Betty Crocket paperback cookbook. Just follow the directions and you’re all set.
My husband’s Russian grandmother made the world’s best Lemon Cake—according to my husband. Now, I consider myself a pretty good baker. I only use European butter, fresh ingredients, everything from scratch. It’s my hobby, my passion. When my husband and I first got together, he talked wistfully of his grandmother’s cake. She was 90+ and living on the other side of the country, so on my urging, he would ask her to send him the recipe. She never got around to it. Over the years, I tried dozens of recipes—using fresh Meyer Lemons that we grew ourselves! He would try them and say, “Well, it’s delicious, but not what I remember from my childhood.”
Finally, we happened to visit the East Coast in the final year of Grandma’s long life. We went to visit her at her home. Joe brought up the cake. She whacked her knee and exclaimed in her thick Jersey-and-cigarettes voice: “Oh Joey! That WAS a great cake! I got it off the box of Betty Crockah. Lemon Poke Cake. I’ll find it for you.”
–Suzy Scuderi, Olympia, Washington
You may be noticing a trend: Most of the stories concerned sweets. While we heard about stolen stuffings and copied casseroles, the vast majority of revelations centered around cookies, cakes, and, in one case, purple jello.
If you swear by your father’s chocolate cake or your grandmother’s famous cookies, you may want to check the recipes on Betty Crocker cake boxes and Hershey’s chocolate chip bags. To be safe, though, you have to investigate uncommon recipes too, as shown by this story about a mulled cider drink called wassail:
I grew up in California, and every Christmas Day for as long as I can remember, my grandmother and then my mother would make wassail in the slow cooker. It simply was not Christmas until the kitchen smelled like wassail, and the simple recipe (apple cider, pineapple juice, honey, sliced citrus, and spices) seemed to differ from any other wassail recipe. So the assumption was always that it had been created by someone far back in the family tree and handed down.
Recently, in a fit of nostalgia, I asked my mom for the recipe, and she dug out a printed recipe card and … It was a mass-produced recipe card from Macy’s department store. It turns out the wassail we enjoyed so much was a “freebie” recipe given away in the Macy’s kitchenware department during one holiday season back in the ‘70s to help sell Crock-Pots!
It was a bit of a let down to learn it wasn’t really some secret family recipe, but I have since introduced my in-laws to it, and they insist I make it every Christmas.
–Stephanie Baldwin, Montréal, Canada
While secret recipe stories tend to have punchlines, many are profound reminders of the link between food and memory:
I was on vacation in San Francisco, and we ended up eating at what could only be referred to as a Chinese spaghetti restaurant. It was inexpensive and very popular.
I ordered my meal, and they served soup as a starter. I took one bite, and it was my father’s vegetable beef soup. I almost got up and checked the kitchen, because he had passed away three months before.
Finally I called my mom, and she said that’s not your dad’s soup; it is Muriel Humphrey’s soup. Muriel was Hubert Humphrey’s wife, who was appointed to his Senate seat after he died. My dad was a lifelong Republican, but clearly he could reach across the fence when it came to an amazing vegetable beef soup recipe.
–Amy Jensen, Minnesota
Nothing surprising at all about this.
I like Chitty Chitty Bang Bang fudge. It’s printed in the book.
The Washington Post ran articles using recipes collected from locals when I arrived in the DC area but was using cookbook recipes at the time I left the area.
My friend used to love the Peruvian chicken he got from a place near Bailey’s Crossroads.
Reviewing reader accounts bolstered one explanation for why secret family recipes turn out to be not-so-secret: Cooks and bakers enjoy passing recipes off as their own. One Gastro Obscura reader recounted how her mother passes off a Neiman Marcus chocolate chip cookie recipe as her own, and, when asked for it, tweaks the recipe so it won’t work as well.
Another story involves a mother-in-law confidentially describing her taco sauce recipe: “Put pan on stove, pour Rosarita taco sauce into it, heat until warm, hide the bottle.”
Delightful!
Getting to be that season for recipes, and the smells that fill the house to make memories.
My parents had a special recipe that blended cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamine. I don’t think they got it from Betty Crocker!
My sister has my mom's recipe for mashed potatoes and gravy which I could easily substitute for turkey at Thanksgiving
“on vacation in San Francisco”
I was in Chinatown about 12 years ago. The area had more jewelry stores than restaurants. I arrived just before closing time for takeout and I got extra large helpings because the young woman wanted to clean the pans rather than store the small amount still left on some. The food was very good.
I stayed in a place called Newark, which appears to be a bedroom community for Asian Silicon Valley workers. There are many promising restaurants there.
“A chef pulled out a jar of Hellman’s mayonnaise and placed it on the table. Meyer looked at it, then realized that the secret recipe his grandmother had hoarded for years was on the jar. It was the official Hellman’s recipe for potato salad.”
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The Chicken or the egg, dilemma. Maybe Hellman’s owes his grandmother’s estate some credit. Hahaha!
Looks like Hellman’s plagiarized it from granny!
Betty Crackhead?
One of my favorite tomato sauce is made from the recipe for Prince tomato sauce that was popular in New England. It has five ingredients and is so simple and quick to make. The secret to the sauce’s deliciousness is tablespoon of sugar.
My father had a good friend whose father passed away many years ago. When my father paid a condolence visit, his friend told him the story. Apparently, the mother had died years earlier, and at their home after the funeral, the father was crying uncontrollably. Now understand, the mother was in her late 70s, and had been somewhat sick for quite some time, so it wasn’t like it was a surprise to anyone. So the friend asked his father why he was so inconsolable. It turns out that he was upset that his wife wouldn’t be able to make his special ice cream anymore. Well, my friend told my father that many years earlier, the mother used to make ice cream for the father, but just got too busy one day, so she went to the store, and bought some Dolly Madison ice cream, and scooped it into an ice cube tray, as if it was handmade. He loved it, told her that it was the best she had ever made, and to keep that recipe…and that’s what she did for the rest of her life. My father’s friend said that he never told his father what the “secret recipe“ was, just because he was more upset about not having the ice cream than his wife.
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