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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

Not sharing recipes

241 replies

ThreeHousesNoHouse · 16/08/2018 18:58

Aibu to find it annoying and childish when people don’t share recipes. As if it makes them special to be the only one who can make a dish.

Even giving a general direction is fair enough e.g. the chicken has paprika and cumin or ‘I put beetroot in the chocolate cake but it’s a family secret recipe so I won’t go into detail’ is fine.

My mil once told me the recipe for dh’s favourite stew she made ‘is somewhere on the internet maybe’ eyeroll.
At least own it and say ‘I want to be the only one able to make his favourite dish’.

It’s more weird when vague acquaintances won’t share. E.g. church bring and share, but won’t share the recipe.

If I make the cake at the next bring and share we will all know it’s Gladys’ recipe. If I make it at the school cake sale how will that affect Gladys?

OP posts:
ChikiTIKI · 17/08/2018 07:37

@sparkletastic - that chocolate log recipe is AMAZING!! we make it every year on Christmas day and it just wouldn't be Christmas without "the squidgy" !!! :)

PintOfMineralWater · 17/08/2018 07:41

Intellectual property? Jeez, people get so wanky about food!

Food is made to be shared, it’s like love - sharing it only enhances the world. Why wouldn’t you want make someone happy with a recipe you love?

Theresnodisneyending · 17/08/2018 07:42

My MIL. Before I married her son (we were engaged for a long time, been together years), I asked her for several recipes over the years as she made some really yummy things. The first thing I asked for I got told "I can only tell you this recipe when you're married". The rest of the recipes she would either avoid answering the message directly, would change the subject, or just go silent.....it was really, really odd. I just tried to find the recipes myself online etc, but then she wasn't happy that I'd tried to do it myself.

junebirthdaygirl · 17/08/2018 07:42

No one ever asks me for any of my recipes!!
My dm made my favourite Christmas Cake. It was exactly the same every year. I loved it and hate every other cake. When any of us follow the exact recipe out of her old school cookery book it never turns out the same. She made 3 every Christmas for 60 years but she is gone now so we will never replicate it.
Think its the persons touch with the ingredients that makes it impossible to copy.

SoupDragon · 17/08/2018 07:51

Think its the persons touch with the ingredients that makes it impossible to copy.

Also, I think very few people follow every recipe to the letter. I always shove extra cinnamon in or tweak the sugar for example. I think I change pretty much every recipe I use in some way of other. I guess they also taste and season as they go along as spices can vary.

Kokeshi123 · 17/08/2018 07:51

The only person I know who would not share a recipe is someone who actually runs her own cupcake bakery business (in which case, fair enough).

If it's non-commercial, yes, it's very childish.

ResistanceIsNecessary · 17/08/2018 07:54

I remember a MN thread on this a few years back where some posters admitted to sharing recipes but leaving out a key ingredient so that it wouldn't taste the same.

I understand that the root of this is insecurity - worry that someone will take your recipe and make it better, and then your achievement will be dimmed and it won't be special anymore.

I think recipes should be shared - in the same way that knowledge is power. I have never had an issue sharing my recipes - and mine are almost always taken from a main source (like Delia or BBC Good Food) and then tweaked by hand over many, many times of making them.

There's only one recipe that I've asked for where the person refused to share it, which was for stovies. One of those dishes where everyone has their own way of doing it but hers was amazing and I have tried and tried to recreate it but it's not the same.

lynmilne65 · 17/08/2018 07:56

Once made a recipe true to Granny's instructions, Not according to my kids !!!!'

Myimaginarycathasfleas · 17/08/2018 07:59

What I will do is tell people the original basic recipe I started with. It's then up to them to spend the time and effort in tweaking it until it's perfection

There you go, OP, your AIBU in a nutshell. What a mean and miserable attitude.

Nousernameforme · 17/08/2018 08:07

I haven't met anyone like this but thanks for the heads up on the chocolate squidgy roll. I shall give that a go

Juells · 17/08/2018 08:07

I'm not interested in baking or cooking, but I can understand that if someone has a special dish they make, that everyone else oohs and aahs over...why would they not want to keep that to themselves? My mother was a good plain cook, but not a baker. The only thing she made that was special was her pavlova, it really was better than everyone else's Grin When other people brought an 'orrible meringue-with-cream-on-top to family do's, and she produced her creamy, chewy, delicious version everyone would drool and ask for the recipe. It was the only housewifely/cooking thing she shone at, if she gave away the recipe she'd be back at the bottom of the heap as the one who couldn't make light pastry or airy sponges.

PattiStanger · 17/08/2018 08:12

Have you posted this before? I'm having a weird deja vu, I'm sure I've read almost the same thread a while back.

Torridon19 · 17/08/2018 08:16

DoubleNegativePanda - Your story could definitely be the basis for a good Midsummer Murders episode.....! ...

NellMangel · 17/08/2018 08:17

I just assume it's cos the key ingredient is a bodily fluid and they're too ashamed to tell anyone.

I agree it's wanky but I suppose there's something nice about having a connection with granny etc that you can pass on to your own grandchildren.

SheWoreBlueVelvet · 17/08/2018 08:20

I'm an enthusiastic but rubbish cook.
You could give me any recipe and I'd probably ruin it.
Maybe that's why people don't share as well. Wouldn't want the memory of great food spoilt by someone else.

Possibly though it's just a load of slightly bored housewives/ house husbands. I agree with the thing someone said about gardeners - they are always sharing and giving away and people happily tell you where they got cutting and seeds from.

twoblackdogs · 17/08/2018 08:24

When my MIL comes to dinner, she often asks for a recipe. She wants me to describe very minutely how it is made and what the ingredients are, and she never writes everything down, and never uses that recipe. Never. If I don't tell, she gets very offended. Very. But it is such a waste of time to tell her all that, because she has never used any of it. She always makes the same things for years and years, and we have had the same birthday cake for more than twenty years at her home. She has been given lots of cookbooks, there are millions of recipes on the internet, but no - nothing ever changes.

Butteredparsn1ps · 17/08/2018 08:27

I strongly suspect there will be a packet of something in many secret recipes too. It’s completely alien to me not to share recipes.

I’m perfectly happy to admit to making Nesquik brownies, they are not as good admittedly as my favourite recipe made with expensive chocolate, but they are quicker, easier and a good substitute. Perfect for a bake sale or pudding with strawberries and ice-cream. I’m quite happy to admit to taking short cuts and sharing recipes, even when they out me as a cheat.

The other thing I love about sharing recipes is feedback - a friend might let me know they had tried a different ingredient that I hadn’t thought of and I get the benefit of their experimentation.

RageAgainstTheTagine · 17/08/2018 08:41

I have a multi-award winning recipe that I won't share. Why would I hand over the way to beat me at next years fete!?

StayAChild · 17/08/2018 08:45

junebirthdaygirl
Think its the persons touch with the ingredients that makes it impossible to copy.
This is so true. My MIL's Christmas cake must be the most frugal recipe ever but no matter how many more luxurious recipes I tried, none came close to hers. The top was full of raised currants which I could not replicate however many times I tried. It must have been her old oven and baking tins. It used to cut so nice too, kind of solid and dark.

ImNotAsGreenasImCabbageLooking · 17/08/2018 08:51

I suppose it's nice to hear "ooh Susan's chocolate cake is the best" so if everyone can make it then Susan has sort of lost that.

Weedsnseeds1 · 17/08/2018 09:18

I recently spent a few days in a cabin, deep in the woods of rural Missouri.
In said cabin was an ancient recipe book, filled with details of secret, family recipes, which appeared to be collected and curated from colleagues at a long since vanished bank in Indiana.
As I am not precious about recipes, I will share with you the secret of " how to make absolutely any dish, sweet or savoury".
Three core ingredients are required.

  1. A tin of Campbell's condensed soup. Preferably chicken or mushroom, although tomato and French onion may be required for some applications
  2. A packet of jello. Lime flavour appears to be the jello equivalent of a universal doner in blood transfusion terms.
  3. A packet of mini marshmallows.
With this holy trinity anything from a dip, to a salad, to a substantial main can be produced. A sample recipe or two( from memory, as I felt this historic document should be left in situ for future generations). Waldorf salad - chop a random selection of vegetables, tinned fruit and nuts. Stir in soup and marshmallows, set with jello. Chicken casserole - put chicken in a dish, pour on soup, crush bag of crisps, sprinkle on top. Bake. Garnish with marshmallows. Chicken noodle soup - tin of chicken soup, fill tin with equal volume of water, add diced chicken and noidles, heat. I don't recall marshmallows in this one, but I'm sure you could only improve the dish by adding a handful as croutons at the end.
Juells · 17/08/2018 09:22

Ahhh... Campbell's Mushroom soup poured over pork chops and baked in oven. One of my MiL's staples.

YaLoVeras · 17/08/2018 09:30

I'm the opposite to these secretive recipe clutchers! If somebody asks how I made something (that I've made a few times already usually), I give them the recipe, but I worry that they won't tweak it like I did to improve it, and so might be a bit disappointed!

I've never asked for a recipe though as if I'm eating something I like, I'm always confident I could recreate something similar. I would find a flat out refusal to share a recipe funny. It might make a nice cake but there is no shortage of recipes for a nice cake and it's not like grading papers on a curve, me making a nice cake won't make your C cake a D.

YaLoVeras · 17/08/2018 09:31

@juells, if me brudder was married I'd think you were slagging me ma's cooking Grin

YaLoVeras · 17/08/2018 09:33

I don't think my mother used a recipe between 1972 and 1986. My childhood. Halcyon days........................ Sometimes I tease her and she claims that the ingredients weren't in the shops. But my aunts always rustled up good food. If I am certain of one thing it's that nobody has ever asked my mother for a recipe.