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.
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.
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
“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.”
________________________________________
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!
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.
I got this great secret recipe for stovetop rice pudding from an old restaurant chef - I wouldn’t be at all surprised if turns out it’s from a package of rice.
1 lb rice
1 lb sugar
1 gallon whole milk
1 tablespoon vanilla
1 teaspoon salt
Fresh nutmeg
Mix everything but nutmeg into large pot.
Boil until the wooden spoon stands up.
(You have to watch it like a hawk and adjust the flame so it doesn’t boil over)
Pour into 9x13 baking dish and chill - sprinkle with fresh ground nutmeg.
Serve with whipped cream (optional).
(It’s also good warm if you can’t wait)
My kids always beg me to make it on holidays.
The perfectly chocolate cake on the Hershey’s cocoa container never disappoints. You can even doctor it up with other flavors or add a creme cheese filling.
It’s my go to chocolate cake.
I went TDY to Paris France with a Bird Colonel. All the way over, he talked about how much he looked forward to authentic French Onion Soup.
Every night, at dinner he would ask for French Onion Soup only to be told that they only had it a few times each week and tonight wasn’t one.
Finally, the last night, he asked for French Onion Soup and the waiter told him, Of Course we have French Onion Soup. Well, it was the best french onion soup he’d ever tasted. He ask the waiter: “could he have the recipe?”. He stated he would understand if the chef wanted to keep such a great recipe secret.
The waiter returned in a few minutes and told the Colonel that: “You can fix this recipe at home.” and sat a can of Cambells French Onion Soup on the table.
Lahmajoon (”Armenian pizza”)
dough
1/3 stick of butter
2.5 cups of flour
salt
enough water to form a dough
I use a bread machine to make the dough
Mix the topping ingredients in a bowl while letting the dough rise:
a pound of meat (10% fat minimum so it will not dry out excessively when cooked)(my mom always used ground round hamburger but the standard meat is lamb)
6 ounces of tomato paste
28 ounce can worth of tomatoes, drained
minced garlic
about half a bunch of chopped fresh parsley (I grow my own, the store parsley often tastes like hay)
some paprika for color (I don’t normally use this nowadays)
some salt
I roll the dough out to cover two cookie pans like my mom did, but the standard way is to make rounds 10 to 12 inches in diameter. The dough should be rolled out to be about 1/8th of an inch thick.
If using cookie pans, the dough should extend up the sides of the pans.
If making traditional rounds, increase the dough recipe amounts by about half.
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
Place the topping on the cookie pan dough while oven is preheating.
Bake about 28-34 minutes if using cookie pans. The dough should brown some and the topping should not dry out. Check about every couple minutes starting about 25 minutes in.
The topping on traditional rounds would not be as thick, so don’t bake them as long.
The cookie pan lahmajoon on the top oven rack will cook before the one on the lower oven rack.
Genuine butter, truly fresh parsley and good garlic are essential for proper flavor.
I have this amazing recipe, a very unusual and original one, and a friend’s mother’s neighbor asked for it, which I obliged very kindly. I happened to come across a cookbook at a thrift store which was from a local church. I bought it and when going through it, I found my recipe which my friend’s neighbor had submitted - with her name as the creator of the recipe.
my dad made a dish that we all loved, which he named after our family name on the spur of the moment when we asked him what it was called ...
let’s say “Smith” is our last name, so he claimed the dish was called “Smith Special” ... no doubt he had no idea what the name really was, but didn’t want to admit that he made a dish that he didn’t know the name of ... us, being little kids at the time, thought that was a perfectly good name, and went away completely satisfied that we knew what we were eating, namely “Smith Special” ... thereafter, we often asked him to make “Smith Special” ...
“Smith Special” was made from elbow macaroni, canned crushed tomatoes, chopped green bell peppers, ground beef and salt and pepper ...
i was telling my wife about this, and she said her family had the same dish but called it “Chinese Goulash” ... since her family is from New Jersey and mine is from North Carolina we figured the ACTUAL recipe came from some magazine like Family Circle or Good Housekeeping, because women’s homemaker magazines were pervasive in those pre-Internet days ...