Speaker 1: From the Australian. This is the weekend edition of The Front.
Speaker 1: I'm Claire Harvey, Albow versus Dutton, Pope Leo versus the
Speaker 1: other Cardinals?
Speaker 2: Who cares?
Speaker 1: The real contest energizing Australians this month is Nagi versus Brookie,
Speaker 1: a debate so divisive it cut through the political chatter
Speaker 1: like a hot knife through butter.
Speaker 3: You know the old recipe tins that you file recipes in.
Speaker 4: Recipe tin Eats is a online version of.
Speaker 1: My old Famed author cook and owner of recipe Tin Eats,
Speaker 1: Nagi Mahashi took to Instagram accusing Penguin Books of publishing
Speaker 1: a cookbook with plagiarized recipes.
Speaker 4: Everyone has been asking me for my cookie recipes since
Speaker 4: my bakery went viral.
Speaker 2: Bake with Brookie is officially in stores October twenty nine.
Speaker 1: Might seem trivial at first, but the stakes change pretty
Speaker 1: quickly when the book in question, Bake with Brookie by
Speaker 1: Brooke Bellamy, is reported to have generated over four million
Speaker 1: dollars in revenue since publication six months ago. Bellamy has
Speaker 1: denied copying anyone's recipes. The stakes changed again when it
Speaker 1: was revealed the recipes in question were for two of
Speaker 1: the most sacred baked goods, Buckliver and Australia's own caramel slice.
Speaker 2: Consider me rattled when I saw this.
Speaker 1: When news of the alleged plagiarism hit, everyone had an
Speaker 1: opinion from the self assured.
Speaker 4: Some people say it's just a recipe, but I think
Speaker 4: that's missing the point. The idea of plagiarizing a particular
Speaker 4: recipe just seems a bit ludicrous to me.
Speaker 2: To people whose feelings were more dubious.
Speaker 5: Look, I'm not really Anthony Bourdain, but I feel like
Speaker 5: it could easily be a coincidence.
Speaker 2: Some people felt inspired.
Speaker 1: So there's been a lot of drama over this caramel slice,
Speaker 1: so let's make it.
Speaker 2: Others dismayed.
Speaker 5: I saw the rooms this morning and I was like, damn,
Speaker 5: Now my cookies have controversy.
Speaker 1: In the newsrooms of The Australian. It's been literated at
Speaker 1: Caroline Overington, Hello and feature writer Fiona Harari Hi leading
Speaker 1: the debate. Now, Fiona, you said the other day, in
Speaker 1: high excitement in the middle of the office.
Speaker 2: The bucklover is this smoking.
Speaker 1: Gun, which I thought was a phrase that I just
Speaker 1: had to get onto the front. Tell me why is
Speaker 1: the Bucklover the smoking gun, and what are we talking about?
Speaker 3: The bucklover is a smoking gun. Look. I did a
Speaker 3: bit of a search for Bucklob I recipes.
Speaker 6: That have a lot of hits, and oh, the variations
Speaker 6: were quite extraordinary. There are so many variations in a
Speaker 6: the ingredients, be the quantities, and see the instructions for
Speaker 6: Bucklob recipes that when you're getting down to things like
Speaker 6: one hundred and seventy five meals of this and one
Speaker 6: hundred and eighty five grams of that, and you know
Speaker 6: the number of sheets of felow that you need and
Speaker 6: the number of strips.
Speaker 3: That you need to cut it into.
Speaker 6: That did make me wonder how you could end up
Speaker 6: with two recipes that were really much more similar than
Speaker 6: any other bu clever recipes I was able to find.
Speaker 1: In The Australian's newsroom, we spend quite a bit of
Speaker 1: time talking about quite serious things. I often see you, Fiona,
Speaker 1: having very deep conversations about injustice or major health problems that.
Speaker 2: People are going through.
Speaker 1: I don't think I've ever seen you as excited about
Speaker 1: a story as you were about this.
Speaker 6: I mean, it's got everything, but it's also quite unlike
Speaker 6: most stories we're used to seeing.
Speaker 3: You know, no one's started in the process.
Speaker 6: There's no really politics involved, there's no crime. The fact
Speaker 6: that a recipe, you know, which is something so intrinsically
Speaker 6: based in our homes, could become the subject of such
Speaker 6: you know, fascination and discussion and so many questions did
Speaker 6: she do it?
Speaker 3: Did she not do it? Is fantastic for those of
Speaker 3: us watching on It's a food fight.
Speaker 4: Did online fes are just fantastics?
Speaker 2: Are I was very proud of myself.
Speaker 1: I suggested a headline to the editor and he used
Speaker 1: it in print, which was Rumble In the Crumble, I'd
Speaker 1: have with myself for that.
Speaker 2: One of the.
Speaker 1: Debates that's arisen out of the Rumble is whether or
Speaker 1: not it's possible to own a recipe, or whether recipes
Speaker 1: are part of our collective cultural knowledge. Personally, I think
Speaker 1: it is absolutely possible, and I think the fact that
Speaker 1: that is even questioned suggests that we don't really value
Speaker 1: women's work or women's intellectual property. This is considered a
Speaker 1: feminine domain, baking, and there seems to be a slightly
Speaker 1: snobbish assumption that was all the same and it all
Speaker 1: must be easy.
Speaker 2: What did you think about that well.
Speaker 4: I think that's incredibly astute because this is big business.
Speaker 4: We're talking about tens of millions of dollars generated by
Speaker 4: two female entrepreneurs. And it also peeled back some layers,
Speaker 4: if you will, on the book industry, because cookbook books
Speaker 4: are far and away the most successful books in Australia.
Speaker 4: Like without the cookbook industry, many publishers quite simply would collapse.
Speaker 4: Now in terms of whether or not you can copyright
Speaker 4: a recipe, plagiarism is not in itself a crime. You
Speaker 4: can't be sued for plagiarism. It's not a criminal offense.
Speaker 4: Traditionally in journalism it's been a moral thing. But it's
Speaker 4: interesting to me that that creative work, as you say,
Speaker 4: because it's by women, perhaps attracts no protection in law.
Speaker 2: That seems like a gap in the law to me, Fiona,
Speaker 2: what do you think?
Speaker 6: Look for me, there's obviously a very important area of
Speaker 6: big business, but I think that there's a whole question
Speaker 6: of courtesy. That's what it comes down to for me,
Speaker 6: as someone who's cooked for a very long time and
Speaker 6: comes from a family of very keen bakers. In my
Speaker 6: very old and very worn recipe photo album at home,
Speaker 6: I have a recipe that is called simply Nancy's chocolate Cake.
Speaker 3: I don't know who Nancy is.
Speaker 6: I think she was a friend of my auntie's, and
Speaker 6: I think I got this recipe thirty years ago, but
Speaker 6: it will always been Nancy's chocolate cake. And people make
Speaker 6: recipes that I've given them, and I may have got
Speaker 6: it from a cookbook years ago, but it's known as
Speaker 6: Fiona's brownie is because I gave it to them. Now,
Speaker 6: I've never professed to have come up with that recipe,
Speaker 6: but I think that over a very long time, there's
Speaker 6: been a tradition where you acknowledge who you have received
Speaker 6: a particular recipe from. And this is not to say
Speaker 6: what has or has not gone on this case. I
Speaker 6: think that as a basic courtesy, people have always generally acknowledged,
Speaker 6: I think when they've received a recipe from someone else.
Speaker 6: So as a very first instance, I think you should
Speaker 6: do that. Can you own a recipe, Well, you can't
Speaker 6: own a buckle of a recipe, but you can presumably
Speaker 6: have your version credited to yourself, is the way I
Speaker 6: would put it.
Speaker 4: What's interesting to me is I think people would accept
Speaker 4: that if you have a very special recipe, you own it.
Speaker 4: The one example that has been given to me since
Speaker 4: this story broke was the snow egg. Now everybody knows
Speaker 4: that the snow egg is owned by Peter Gilmore because
Speaker 4: he invented it, he presented it on Master Chef. If
Speaker 4: you saw that meringue on the little bowl of Grenda
Speaker 4: anywhere else, you would know exactly where they got it from.
Speaker 4: What the problem is here is that the two recipes
Speaker 4: that Nagi says have appeared in Brookie's book, rightly or wrongly,
Speaker 4: are for a caramel slice and baklava.
Speaker 2: Now baklover is.
Speaker 4: At least three thousand years old and probably longer. It's
Speaker 4: certainly been made by people in the Middle East for
Speaker 4: at least that long. And the caramel slice a recipe
Speaker 4: for that has been on the side of the nest
Speaker 4: lay tin for at least fifty years. So it wasn't
Speaker 4: unique enough. It's not a snow egg.
Speaker 1: When you talked about the smoking gun, about the buckle
Speaker 1: of Afiona, I think one of the things you might
Speaker 1: have been referring to is the formatting of these recipes.
Speaker 1: So it's not just that the ingredients are identical down
Speaker 1: to the gram, but that the paragraphs are formatted in
Speaker 1: the same way, so there's three sentences in the paragraph,
Speaker 1: there's a break and there's not a threat.
Speaker 3: And the order in.
Speaker 6: Which the instructions are given as well, like take your
Speaker 6: forty sheets of Philo pastry, cut them in four slices
Speaker 6: on the diagonal. I mean, they're very specific instructions. And again,
Speaker 6: on my quick perusal of different buckclover recipes before, there
Speaker 6: were huge variations. There's lebonones, bucklova, there's Greek bucklov there's
Speaker 6: different types of nuts. Some of them seem to have
Speaker 6: orange blossom water in there. There are a lot of variations.
Speaker 4: I know.
Speaker 6: Yeah, caramel slice maybe because there are fewer ingredients.
Speaker 4: Yes, but there's also the point that you can't make
Speaker 4: a caramel slice without including those ingredients. And that's what
Speaker 4: Brookie said. She's like, at the end of the day,
Speaker 4: cooking is not just not just a matter of throwing
Speaker 4: things together. It's a science. Things react to each other.
Speaker 4: That's why the recipes work. So it's not like you
Speaker 4: can say, oh, okay, dump in three cups of flour
Speaker 4: and make it.
Speaker 2: It has to be one cup.
Speaker 6: I hadn't been aware that in the recipe t and
Speaker 6: eats version. So she actually says, I've taken this recipe
Speaker 6: from someone else.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And she does that with actually quite a few recipes,
Speaker 4: because we agree that everybody has their recipe and then
Speaker 4: they put like little bit of ginger in it. That's
Speaker 4: your little twist.
Speaker 6: I think if you've cooked for long enough and there
Speaker 6: are recipe that you follow, I know, in my case,
Speaker 6: there are things that I've had a recipe for originally,
Speaker 6: and I've made it so many times over so many
Speaker 6: years that I you know, you lose the recipe, you
Speaker 6: remember it and you add your own additions to it,
Speaker 6: and that's how it becomes your version of a bucklovar,
Speaker 6: or of a spaghetti bolonnaise, or whatever else it might be.
Speaker 4: But then other people come along. So let's say, for example,
Speaker 4: the first person to stick a lemon up the chickens bump,
Speaker 4: like that's now done by I did make a hand
Speaker 4: gesture like that's now done by everyone. The first person
Speaker 4: to put their hand under the skin, you know, and
Speaker 4: rub the garlic around, but that's now done by everyone.
Speaker 4: So who is to say who owns that particular little twist?
Speaker 4: Well of the lemon?
Speaker 6: But then what are you supposed to do? What are
Speaker 6: you supposed to do? If you see a version of
Speaker 6: a work that you believe you have produced and you
Speaker 6: see pretty much the same ingredients, instructions steps, what are
Speaker 6: you supposed to do?
Speaker 3: Is it out there?
Speaker 6: Have you given it out there to everyone? Or do
Speaker 6: you have some sort of say over how it's.
Speaker 4: How it's presented? Now? Nagi said, I just would have
Speaker 4: liked some attribution because she's says the recipe was originally hers,
Speaker 4: and Brookie says, no, it wasn't.
Speaker 3: So it wasn't originally hers. Wasn't it someone else's?
Speaker 2: It's someone else? But she acknowledged that, right, But then.
Speaker 3: Maybe the attribution needs to go to the original person.
Speaker 3: I don't know at what point do you? Where does
Speaker 3: the attribution begin and end?
Speaker 2: Coming up? How the cookie has crumbled? Sorry?
Speaker 1: The consequences of this cookbook controversy that Bellamy denies all
Speaker 1: accusations of plagiarism. She says she's been using the caramel
Speaker 1: slice recipe in question since twenty sixteen, four years before
Speaker 1: it was published by Nagi Mahashi in twenty twenty. Bellamy
Speaker 1: also offered to remove the recipe from future reprints of
Speaker 1: the book and express great respect for Nagi, but it
Speaker 1: seems the court of public opinion has sided with Nargu Mahashi,
Speaker 1: and naturally, people focused on the optics have followed suit.
Speaker 4: The recipe plagiarism saga has escalated with Brook Bellamy in
Speaker 4: the owner of Baking Empire Brookie Bakehouse, dropped from a
Speaker 4: big ambassador role.
Speaker 1: Bellamy was released from her role as ambassador at the
Speaker 1: Academy for Enterprising Girls, and when the two faced off
Speaker 1: at the Australian Book Industry Awards in Melbourne's CBD.
Speaker 6: Nagi Mahashi, the founder of popular food blog recipe Team Eats,
Speaker 6: has bested fellow cookbook author Brook Bellamy in a major
Speaker 6: book prize.
Speaker 1: But most predictably, it was the online pylon that was
Speaker 1: the most severe, leading to Nagi issuing a statement via
Speaker 1: her Instagram account.
Speaker 5: Please stop the trolling. I know I've made serious allegations,
Speaker 5: but this does not justify the person at attacks that
Speaker 5: I've seen online against Brook Bellamy.
Speaker 6: I was reading and Claire can attest to this. Probably
Speaker 6: way too many responses where this line of comments, and
Speaker 6: I don't know that much about either woman, but a
Speaker 6: lot of the people who were coming at quite ferociously
Speaker 6: in favor of Nagi, were saying because we love her,
Speaker 6: we love her, And I thought to myself, well, is
Speaker 6: that a reason to come out and to defend someone?
Speaker 6: To me, the argument should be not about if you
Speaker 6: love someone or not. It's about if this has happened
Speaker 6: to someone's recipe, should that person be acknowledged or should
Speaker 6: they not be acknowledged. I mean, it's lovely that she's loved,
Speaker 6: but to me, that's not really what's the question, because
Speaker 6: there's there will be other cases where people.
Speaker 3: Will allege their work has been used by others.
Speaker 1: The reason people love Nagi is that she has done
Speaker 1: something different. She has brought something that Jamie Oliver, Nigella
Speaker 1: Laws and Bill Granger, you know, the guy with the
Speaker 1: chicken and a lemon.
Speaker 3: It's another who owns the.
Speaker 4: Beer can in a chicken. It's got to be. Yeah.
Speaker 4: What she brought to the table I think is her
Speaker 4: authenticity and that's another ingredient, as it were in this story.
Speaker 4: And she does it in such a superb way, whereas
Speaker 4: Brookie has always been a bit more about baking cookies
Speaker 4: from maybe a generation. Why audience not as broad.
Speaker 6: See I don't think this is a question about personalities.
Speaker 6: I think they have nothing to do with it, and
Speaker 6: I know lots of people are getting it down to personalities.
Speaker 6: It's a wider question of who do you attribute, And
Speaker 6: I think in this case, in fact, maybe the original
Speaker 6: person needs to be attributed and she's been forgotten. You know,
Speaker 6: if Nagi has got the recipe from someone else and
Speaker 6: she has attributed to this person, maybe that's the person
Speaker 6: who needs the acknowledgment if her recipe has been taken.
Speaker 1: Caroline Overington is The Australian's literary editor and Fiona Harari
Speaker 1: is a feature writer at The Australia. You can read
Speaker 1: their outstanding work anytime at the Australian dot com dot ay.
Speaker 1: This episode was hosted by me Claire Harvey and produced
Speaker 1: and edited by Jasper Leck, who also wrote our theme.
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us on the front this week. Our
Speaker 1: team includes Kristin Amiot Leat Sammaglu, Tiffany Dimac, Josh Burton
Speaker 1: and Stephanie Combs.