A recipe for bitter recriminations

It may leave a sour taste in the mouth for some, but copying recipes is all part of the evolution of culinary taste, writes Paul Lewis

Can a recipe - as some of the world's top restaurateurs and food experts are now asking - ever be considered intellectual property?

A certain dish has prompted this debate on the online food forum, eGullet. The recipe, in brief: prawns are pureed using an enzyme called transglutaminase, extruded into a noodle, cooked, and served with smoked yoghurt, paprika and nori. Not the sort of meal that two chefs would seem likely to invent at the same time.

Still, identical versions of this dish appeared simultaneously on the websites of two cutting-edge restaurants - Melbourne's Interlude, run by British chef Robin Wickens (31); and Wylie Dufresne, head chef/owner of New York restaurant WD-50. The former, it quickly transpired, had copied the latter, without crediting the innovator. Interlude also appeared to have produced replicas of recipes from other restaurants.

Wickens claims the near-identical dishes were a result of a trip to WD-50 and says, "At no time did I try and claim that I invented any of the dishes that I had experienced in the US and recreated at Interlude."

"It might be a bloody cheek. But so what?" says restaurant reviewer Egon Ronay. "It goes on all the time. Chefs travel the world looking for dishes and try to imitate them in their own menus. That's how good cooking spreads - it's what food is all about. Frankly, in my view, it doesn't matter a damn."

Dufresne is reluctant to criticise Wickens, who recently sent him a letter of apology. Whatever his justification, Wickens has opened a Pandora's box. As an eGullet editorial put it: "We believe . . . it's one of the most significant issues facing the global culinary community today."

But can you copyright a recipe? No, says Alex Papakyriacou, of intellectual property law firm Briffa. "Case law suggests that reproducing a written recipe in the preparation of a dish is not copyright infringement. The same goes for recipes that have been communicated aurally or by a chef deciphering the ingredients and method involved in the preparation of a recipe by sampling a dish prepared to it."

Nor is it possible to patent a recipe, either in the UK or US, because the organic development of food will never constitute an "inventive step".

But if there is no legal basis crediting a dish, is there a moral incentive? "Only if it's a signature dish by one of the very few truly original chefs in the world," reckons Richard Corrigan from Co Meath, the chef owner of two of London's top restaurants, Lindsay House and Bentley's Oyster Bar and Grill. "Everyone has been robbed in the middle of London, it's normal. But it doesn't bother me; I'm sometimes tickled. Every restaurant in London is after my bread recipe, for example, and it's not easy to keep it a secret."

Rowley Leigh, head chef at Kensington Place, says that unless recipes are copied verbatim without credit in a rival's cook book - he was once a victim of this - chefs should be flattered when their peers use their ideas. Chefs who, like Wickens, make carbon copies of other people's menus are not guilty of much more than "poverty of imagination", reckons Leigh.

Wickens says, "I guess I did something bad and have to pay the punishment - but it happens a lot more regularly than people realise."

But Dufresne is forgiving - perhaps understandably so. His controversial prawn noodle dish, he admits, can be traced back to the kitchen of Britain's Heston Blumenthal, who runs the Fat Duck restaurant. "We all plagiarise all the time. All we can do is stand on the shoulders of the people before us. It's a grey area. None of us is completely innocent."