Sorry if it’s already been mentioned, there is an article in the Telegraph suggesting the one-pot pasta recipe is copied from another chef’s book:
Meghan’s reheated someone else’s pasta recipe, viewers claim
People watching the Duchess’s new Netflix show quick to point out similarities between her dish and a 2015 recipe by British chef Anna Jones.
Hannah Furness Royal Editor. Max Stephens
06 March 2025 9:01pm GMT
The Duchess of Sussex’s recipe for “single skillet spaghetti” bears a striking resemblance to a dish made famous in a 2015 British cookbook, viewers have claimed.
The dish, which she makes in the first episode of her new lifestyle show on Netflix, sees her combine kale, lemon and tomatoes in one pan with spaghetti before topping with parmesan.
Viewers immediately noticed the similarity with Anna Jones’s kale, tomato and lemon magic one-pot spaghetti, published in her 2015 cookbook A Modern Way to Cook.
Both recipes highlight the novelty of cooking the ingredients all in one pan, with the Duchess adding just a few extra ingredients as she plates hers up.
The programme does not acknowledge Jones’s recipe.
In the first episode of With Love, Meghan, she tells her guest, make-up artist and friend Daniel Martin: “I’m going to make you pasta. You do it all in one pot. Single skillet spaghetti.”
She explained: “We do the whole thing in one pan, just like making a frittata...
“You’re going to love this and you’ll go ‘why have I been doing this this different way this whole time?’
Describing it as “very easy, it’s a family favourite”, Meghan adds: “When I make this, I make this for my family.”
When Martin compliments the dish as “so f-g good” at the end of the segment, Meghan nods as he describes the dish as being hearty without being heavy.
‘The new Nigella’
Jones’s recipe was praised by chefs including Jamie Oliver and Nigel Slater, with one reviewer calling her “the new Nigella”.
It has since been made available online.
The recipe instructs home cooks to boil water, chop tomatoes and throw them in the pan with the pasta, grate the zest from lemons and add the boiling water on top before covering with a lid.
Simmer for six minutes, it says, and remove tough stalks from kale or spinach and roughly tear the leaves before adding to the water. When cooked, add parmesan.
The Duchess’s recipe invites viewers to boil water, chop tomatoes, put the pasta on top in a pan and pour boiling water on top before zesting a lemon into it.
Cut chard and kale, let the pasta dish boil for six minutes, and “tear up some of these greens to tier on top of it”.
The Duchess adds rocket, chilli flakes and a basil leaf at the end of her version, which Jones’s does not require.
Xanthe Clay, chef and Telegraph food writer, said Meghan should have credited the chef whose recipe had provided inspiration for her own.
She said that Jones may or may not have invented the one-pot technique but her recipe was the earliest she could find.
“As any food writer knows, it’s dismal to find your hard-won recipe ‘repurposed’ in someone else’s book, web page or TV show. There’s no copyright on the ingredients list (after all, the ingredients for meringues, say, are pretty much set). It’s the wording of the method that belongs’ to the writer, and as Meghan’s isn’t written down she’s probably safe from legal action.
But – and this is a big but – Meghan’s does seem very similar to Anna’s, from ingredients to technique… Not, of course, that I am suggesting that Megs doesn’t come up with her own recipes – after all, her version does include garlic and chilli flakes, unlike Anna’s.
“Still, legal niceties aside, Meghan may not get away with this without a stain on her expensive linen apron. Cookery writer etiquette demands that you acknowledge your sources. That doesn’t need to be an Oscar speech length list of thank yous, just a simple line of gratitude for the inspiration.”
Franceso Mazzei, the chef who helped design King Charles’ and Stanley Tucci’s menu last month to celebrate Anglo-Italian relations at HighGrove, said chefs should generally acknowledge when they are serving a dish that they are replicating from someone else.
“You have to acknowledge the recipe, people will know, it will get back to you”.
Neither Jones, Netflix, nor representatives of the Duchess have commented.