To think there is a MORAL OBLIGATION to share recipes if asked?

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Look, it's just a pickle recipe. Your daughter gave me a jar, it tasted delicious and I asked for the recipe when I'd finished the jar because we'd all fought over the last spoonful.

You live 200 miles away and you have refused to give out the recipe.

It's an outrage.

What was the pickle?

Do you mean point-blank said "No" or just "Can't be arsed to write it down"? If the former, that's crazy. Recipes are to be shared freely, like air and seasons and shit.

Bizarre.

Maybe it's from a shop?

I can still taste my GMs runner bean chutney even though it's probably 20 years odd since I last had it.

An aubergine pickle, a bit like a dry brinjal.

Damn.

I think refusing a recipe request is, frankly, a slap in the face of all good social etiquette.

I am weirdly precious about my Nana's pastry recipe. She was rather precious about it and one day was suddenly keen to hand it over. (She died a few months later)

I know I'm a bit rude but I won't tell anyone why I make the best pastry they've ever tasted (I get a lit if compliments).

It was a refusal outright! I was told it was a secret.

Mind boggling at imagining the situation where you're freely sharing your shit Hassled.

Hassled Shit is to be shared freely?

:o

Hahaha.

Smug smuggers.

It'll be like Phoebe's grandma - she's embarrassed that t's not a special family recipe but something that's easily available on the back of a packet somewhere.

"...and shit" just means "...and stuff" round these parts. By round these parts I probably mean just in my house.

Told it was a secret with a wink and a smile, or was she deadpan and serious?

YABU secret recipes are just that - secret.

But what's the motivation for not sharing? We aren't making for the same Christmas hampers.

AZ, it's serious. I'm not getting the recipe, no way, no how.

Are they members of the KFC family?

It's sad and makes me wonder how much of a person's self esteem is wrapped up in how they throw ingredients together. If people don't like you for more than your ability to make the perfect pickle, then you have more to worry about than whether your secret gets out!

YANBU, why withhold it? I often eat things in restaurants and then drive myself up the wall trying to recreate them at home. Soft but chewy cookies, like you can buy in the bakery sections of supermarket have proved my nemesis for years!

It's such a compliment to be asked for the recipe for something you've made, I can't understand why they'd be so funny about it.

Unless she's making it to sell as well?

The key to chewy cookies is to cook them at a higher temperature but not for very long, and to take them out when they seem to be "not cooked yet".

Hehe, not KFC.

(Although, at least if they were I could buy some of the damn pickle from shops on crap high streets at unsociable hours).

I agree, it's a self-esteem issue.

It's making me think of that Friends episode where Phoebe's grandmother's secret cookie recipe turned out to be some standard shop cookie. I reckon your Brinjal Pickle is the very lovely Patel's version.

Over my dead body would I hand over my nan secret Welsh cake recipe. When she went into a care home and we all sorted her house out I found it.

Now I make the best Welsh cakes.

My view is that you wouldn't ask coca cola to reveal the secret of there recipe so why to in family recipes.

Thanks Trills, I'll give that a go.