Nagi and Brooke - caramel slice

[InWalksBarberalla]

I came to see if anyone was talking about this. Nagi has accused Brooke of plagiarism in her cookbook - by copying her caramel slice and baklava recipes. Along with copy another writers (Sally - ) vanilla cake recipe and Bill Granger's porteguese tarts). It's blown up with people taking sides , along with missing the point (it's not about copywriters recipes it's about plagiarism). Looking at the recipes side by side I don't see that Brooke and Penguin have a leg to stand on (the 'Yes, a tablespoon!' In the vanilla cake recipe line is pretty damning.)

Yeah it's an interesting one isn't it? I mean, how many ways can you make a basic cake for example? Loads of recipes are bound to be really similar.

I think it's more about giving credit where it's due. Adam Liaw used to be an intellectual property lawyer & made some good comments about it, will see if I can find the article.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/may/02/torte-law-bakers-plagiarism-allegations-recipes-ntwnfb

I'm team Nagi too!

Team Nagi.

Definitely Team Nagi. I believe her to be a person of integrity, and she attributes recipes where she has reproduced them or tweaked them.

She’s also very savvy and would not make these accusations lightly.

I think a lot of media attention is too caught up in the ingredients and overall methods rather than the similarities in write up. Sure there are only so many ways to make a caramel slice - and measures will often be standard based on cups etc. But the exact same ordering of ingredients (even within groups of wet and dry), the almost exact words through all the steps, even the point when the oven is pre heated part way through the steps being identical etc just seems too big of a coincidence.
One of the few differences in Brooke's caramel slice recipe is she says to cool them in the oven, instead of Nagi's chill in the fridge. Which is clearly a stuff up by Brooke's team!

The whole thing is just bonkers. WTF was Brooke thinking? You'd think Penguin's editors and lawyers would have sorted this all out before publication. In every publishing contract I have ever seen, there's a clause where the author warrants the work is their own

Penguin don't have a good track record with the whole Belle Gibson debacle.

I was thinking that too. Great point. Heads rolled over that diabolical fuck up, have they learnt nothing?

The order of ingredients usually complies to a standard, so even if Brooke had listed them differently, an experienced cookbook editor would put them into a standard order. (It’s generally listed by amount in descending order, or by the order in which they are mentioned/used.) So that’s not so much of the issue. What is the main issue is the writing of the method.

Penguin’s statement I think is pretty standard from a corporation that’s taking advice from a legal team. But I don’t know if they’ve updated their statement since the Sally’s Baking Addiction claims came out. On the inside though, they’ll be shitting themselves and Brooke’s publisher and editor will be scrambling to put together evidence to show that they did their due diligence.

Yes, I see what you mean about the standard descending order of ingredients. The method is where you put your own stamp on it, so to speak.

I liked Adam Liaw pointing out that there's a myth that if you change 3 points in a recipe it becomes 'yours' when in fact no such law exists. Then again, I just like Adam anyway😍

Meanwhile I watch Adam's "The Cook Up" on SBS most evenings and on Thursday they played the episode where he had Brooke Bellamy on. Coincidence much? 🙄

There definitely seems to be a bit of side taking in the media and celeb chef circles. I ger his point about recipes being so similar and I hadn't realised about ingredient list ordering. Still think the rest is too similar to be coincidence - the 'yes, a tablespoon!', and I've read she also left out a step in the baklava recipe that Nagi had missed. You shouldn't be able to just take other people's work and change a few words and publish under your own name.

Penguin did take out the caramel slice recipe and replace it with a more standard golden syrup version in the second edition which would indicate that Brooke didn't have great evidence to support her story (despite the photo of a random chocolate slice).

We always changed the ingredients just to be on the safe side. So mixed peel instead of zest, change the spices etc etc. The method is the major thing but it's not cool to simply lift an entire ingredient list.

Adam Liaw has spoken about this and he said that you can't really own recipes because of how many versions exist

It’s correct that you can’t copyright recipes, but the accusation is plagiarism, not breach of copyright.

Many respected chefs and cooks use other people’s recipes (Nagi herself, Nigella, Ottolenghi). It’s an accepted part of the business. But when they do so, they attribute them and rewrite them in their own words.

Team Nagi here too.
She showed some screenshots on her Facebook where Brook mentioned when she first shared the recipe, which was October of X year but Nagi was earlier the same year, maybe March time? I can't remember exactly.
She has asked for all the hate to stop towards Brook which is fair enough.
Chefs always have a certain way of writing a recipe that you almost hear it in their voice. So Jamie Oliver, Nigella, to name a couple out of many. Brook could have just said, as Nagi often does, recipe inspired by or from X chef and none of this would have happened

Yes, Brooke said Nagi published the recipe in 2020, but Nagi showed her web archive with the original pub date of 2016.

Definitely not a fan of Brooke. I bought her book for (young adult) DD who likes to make cookies and she decided to make me a birthday cake from it. The ingredients cost $60, and that was with having pantry staples at home. I had to step in and help her salvage a couple of the elements as the instructions were so crap - it was a nice-ish cake in the end but definitely not worth the time, cost or tears. Nagi’s recipes on the other hand just work.

Team Nagi all the way.

Sounds like Brooke has admitted to lying about the recipes. She’s admitted that she didn’t invent them.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14745341/amp/Brooki-Bake-Recipe-Tin-Eats-Brisbane.html?ico=amp_articleInlineText

Well, she kind of had no place to go, so this isn’t really surprising. I wonder why it took her so long.