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.

I have a "secret family recipe" for chocolate brownies. The secret is it is a packet mix from Costco. As my told me about it I believe it counts as a famy recipe!

I used to tell people who asked for the recipe but they always treated me weirdly as if I had failed so now I lie!

I do tell close friends though.

Well I can't be bothered to keep any recipes secret myself but I understand why some people do. I am surprised that you're so bothered by it. Can't you make a rough guess at the ingredients or look up pickle recipes online?

I think being asked for a recipe is a great compliment. If you can share a recipe that others can use and think of you when they eat it, why wouldn't you? Very selfish imo

I have a very foodie friend, who demanded the recipe of my wonderful coffee mousse:

Whip one pint of double cream and 3 tablespoons of Camp. Then add about 10 crumbled shop bought meringues. Leave to set in fridge for 2 hours.

She felt cheated and as if I pulled a fast one on her.

Would have been better to lie!

Yabu. There is no "moral" obligation to share a recipe.
It may be not very friendly, but not a direct attack on the very fabric of society, get over yourself.
But then, where I come from, we are quite passionate about our food, and we like to share tips with only our dearest friends. So maybe we are just a bunch of assholes.

I dunno, the way I see it is - it's free to share and spread the enjoyment! Why wouldn't you? (Unless you're selling the stuff).

Hmm, not sharing a recipe is an attack on society in the same way as not queuing, just pushing in. No one dies, no laws are broken but if we all did it, the world would be worse off.

I love people asking for recipes of things I've made and will always give it (not many are my own though although I often adapt ones from books). Equally I'll ask others for recipes, although most recent was for a curry at a friends where everyone brought a different curry or accompaniment. This particular one was amazing, when I asked for the recipe person said he couldn't possibly give it to me. Thinking he was being awkward I was a bit put out until he explained he never uses one and just adds a bit of this spice, a bit of that, keeps testing until it tastes good. still wants a recipe

I share any recipe knowledge I have except those few family recipes. There are many many recipes which my grandmother developed herself and passed down to her children. The very few I do not pass on were given especially to my mum who was told to keep them to herself, and when she passed them on to me, I was told the same.

The reason I may not pass them on to dd is that she's not that bothered about cooking at the moment. If she has no interest in them then there's no point in my telling her them. I shall tell my good friend instead.

I don't care if you lot think I'm antisocial or immoral for hanging on to them. I'll give you any other recipe you want, just not those few. Having promised mum to keep them secret it would be immoral of me to tell them to you. I won't be extracting promises from whoever I tell though.

When I was an adolescent, pretty well everyone had their own special recipe for something, which was a close guarded secret. It really wasn't unusual; I don't really understand the problem you all have.

"But then, where I come from, we are quite passionate about our food, and we like to share tips with only our dearest friends. So maybe we are just a bunch of assholes."

I'm Mediterranean and Latin; I think we qualify as "passionate about food" for dozens of generations and we absolutely love to talk about it freely, to/with anyone who will listen. Hell, we impose our foolproof tips to random strangers at every opportunity.

'I'm passionate about food therefore won't share' makes no sense. If you're passionate about food, wouldn't it be better if more people knew great recipes?

Oh, we share it. But with people we like. So not everybody.

I guess there is the nice feeling of teaching somebody you like or love a beloved recipe directly in the kitchen, and have the feeling that you are transmitting something to a deserving friend. Exclusivity make it special.
But then, I am a self-admitted asshole. too bad.

I suppose the sense of exclusivity adds to the value for some people - the rarer something is, the more precious. If more people have the recipe, it loses it's "specialness".

It's a dangerous business refusing to share recipes, though. Remember that episode of Desperate Housewives, where Katherine refuses to share her lemon meringue pie recipe with Bree.....!

msrisotto aldi do a lovely mild Thai curry IN A JAR

I'm not good with using spices subtly so my curries usually make your eyeballs burn from the fumes wafting up, but even my curry-phobic kids (wonder why?) will eat the aldi one.

ha ha ha I remember the first time I came across this: I was helping a snobby parvenu friend (friend's mother actually) with a drinks party she had arranged to show off her new big Georgian pile, and she had invited another snobby friend (but a bit less parvenu) also to help. In an attempt to bond with this tailored, lipsticked, coiffed (probably set under one of those hot domes with "setting lotion") conical-bra'ed, sort of county type, you know, with long, long feet in huge shiny boaty court shoes (I was about 25 and wearing a hippy skirt with ballet flats from Shoe Zone), I asked her for her recipe for her Special Crisp Biscuits.

OMG. The horror. You could have heard a pin drop. The cat looked at me, shook her head in a "this won't end well" way and stalked away from the aga.

She got over herself eventually, clearly making a huge effort For The Sake Of Mrs B (they had known each other for 30 years and called each other Mrs hiis and Mrs That), did a big wrenching sort of swallowing motion, blinked and said "well as I suppose we will never move in the same circles, I suppose I could share it with you."

The special crisp biscuits - which are vile - are made of crushed crisps and grated cheddar cooked to a sort of condensed, flat, here-comes-your-coronary pill.

I will never make the disgusting things of course. I hope someone on here does and offers them to her at a drinks party.

MFIC please tell us what happened! I am curious now...did she publish it somewhere and attempt to pass it off as her own?! Or try to 'upgrade' it. Despite what I says earlier I can imagine a few scenarios that would piss me off.

OP - your description sounded to me a bit like the South African Aubergine (they call it Eggplant) Pickle - I found this on Google and it does seem to have quite a bit of Turmeric in as well as mustard seeds - and there doesn't seem to be much liquid.

Do you think this could be it?

www.foodgeeks.com/recipes/south-african-eggplant-chutney-brinjal-blatjang-21096

I hate to break it to you OfaFrenchMind but most of the time people are only asking to be polite. They're not actually going to make it. They might not even like it, which was how vezzie came to ask for the secret of the revolting-sounding Special Crisp Biscuits.

Vezzie, they sound an awful lot like the way I imagine Pringles are made. I think the company employs people on Workfare to chew up value-range regular crisps and then spit them at high velocity onto a super-heated, constantly rotating steel cylinder.

By the time the cylinder makes its circuit, the reconstituted spit and crisp combination has solidified and peels off onto a conveyor belt where they are packed in tubes by children, or adults with freakishly small hands.

And your snobby friend sounds like Sideshow Bob in those boaty shoes.

Spindarella You can have this tip for nothing - in fact I think it's a public service. No matter how much you like Aldi's Thai curry, do not touch their tomato and chilli sauce in a jar. I cannot begin to describe how terrible it is.

Their Solesta brand olive oil is fine. I wouldn't put it on salads (my ancestral recipe is lettuce and tomatoes and the secret tip is to cut them up, btw) but it's perfectly okay to cook with, if someone gives it to you.

It's weird innit? My Greek STBex-MIL used to give me recipes when I asked for them but would deliberately omit either a vital ingredient or a vital step.

I'm not the best cook in the world but make pretty good cakes and am delighted to share the recipe when asked (other than with ex-MIL, natch)

There's something weirdly controlling and insecure about people who wont share recipes, isn't there?

'I like you so much I am sharing the gift of my cookies, but I do not share the recipe as I cannot bear the thought of you enjoying them without me present to bask in your adoration and feel like lady bountiful as you beg me for more'

Seriously secret-recipe-hoarders, your personal relationships and social status will not dissolve just because someone else makes it occasionally (trust me, they wont be bothered to make it as often as you, and will still devour it when you make it).

On a tangent, before I was born my mum had a friend called Margaret, who gave her a lovely chocolate cake recipe. I had that cake a dozen times in childhood, and naturally when I left home I hand copied from my mums handwritten recipe. Whenever I make it, I still think fondly of that Margaret (who I never met).

I will also freely give out recipes I have discovered that people like but am over protective of family ones. The family ones were the ones I learnt from my grandmother and mother cooking by their side until I learnt how to make the food like they did. My grandmother is no longer here but everytime I make something that she taught me it takes me back to that memory. So whenever someone ask me for a family recipe it seems quite a personal thing for me to give out so I pretend to forget!

I agree recipes are to be shared and loved.

My dc has left nursery and for various reasons I used to make them cakes, I have printed out all the recipes in a wee booklet with tips and hints and photos of her and asked them to be shared and passed round and loved.

Some are so simple and some are great for cooking for 50

I always think people who won't share are knobs too full of themselves!

limited you may have just done me a massive service I have Pringles next to me and although i laughed I can't bear the thought!