I’m inspired by many things: The colours in my herb garden, a perfect bite of cheese at a Toronto Farmer’s Market, the mango salad at my favorite college dive. Just thinking of these experiences makes my fingertips crave a keyboard.
The question: When is it appropriate to type “inspired by” in a food blog post?
At BlogHer Food in Atlanta this May, the “Recipe Writing: Copyright, Credit, and Etiquette” pannellists, Dianne Jacob, David Leite and a lawyer named Liza Barry-Kessler, posed the same question. Attendees gave examples of possible uses. They seemed to agree that you may use “inspired by” if:
- it’s a dish you’ve had in a restaurant and tried to capture for yourself;
- if you’ve recreated the essence of a purchased product (David Leite’s example: some “Cha Cha Cookies” he’d received as a gift);
- if a picture of a particular snack (e.g., fried smelts with lemon wedges) propels you to your deep fryer for a recipe development session;
- if a recipe for one dish has you imagining its flavours in another (e.g., a recipe for a Moroccan Tagine enters your kitchen and comes out as a chicken stuffing with preserved lemon, apricots and saffron).
Interestingly, NONE of the answers involve the writer seeing a recipe for the actual dish.
Conclusion: Even glimpsing a recipe makes it ineligible for “inspired by” status.
When do you use “inspired by”? Does the above restriction work for you?
2 Comments
Thanks for starting this. I’ve wondered about that…some of my “inspirations” are combining two different recipes, so I guess it isn’t an inspiration, but a substitution in format? I’ve also tried to grab recipes that encourage dissemination. I’ll be following you as you go through this subject?
I hadn’t thought about cases of combining two different recipes. I suppose one could say that you are then adapting the two recipes simultaneously. For me it would depend on how similar the two original recipes are. To stick with an example from the post, if you are combining two recipes for Moroccan Tagine and the result is another Moroccan Tagine, I think you’re more than just inspired by the recipes. That is probably an adaptation. If, on the other hand, you have a recipe for Moroccan Tagine and a recipe for Matzo Ball Soup and you combine them to make Saffron and Preserved Lemon Chicken Soup with Olives, Apricots and Couscous Dumplings, then the result feels more unique and is more justly inspired by the two originals.
Thank you so much for reading and for starting the discussion! Your point has gotten me thinking about a mess of other possibilities.
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