Latest / The Front / Nagi v Brooki: Who won the great food ‘plagiarism’ fight?

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Nagi v Brooki: Who won the great food ‘plagiarism’ fight? · The Front

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: From the Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Claire Harvey.
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: It's Thursday, January one, twenty twenty six. Every so often
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: a literally scandal blows up, and this one was especially delicious.
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: Two beloved Australian cookbook authors embroiled in a public dispute
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: about who owns they're very similar recipes for dessert favorites,
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: chocolate caramel slice and Bucklovar. Nagi Mayhashi versus Brooke Bellamy
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: had everything a generation gap, passionate supporters on either side,
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: home cook sleuths rushing to the kitchen for some test
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: baking and a conversation about big ideas like the worth
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: of women's work and the concept of courtesy. One of
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: the Australian's most esteemed journalists, Fiona Hairari, is also a
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: passionate home cook, with a pretty famous recipe for brownies
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: and some firm opinions about this big blow up. Fiona,
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: only you would come to an interview about food with
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: research and highlighted documents. What is all this?
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: Food is very serious to me?
• 1:21
  Speaker 3: I often say to people, and I'm serious about this too,
• 1:24
  Speaker 3: that I liked food before it was even popular.
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: I like food like it's my thing.
• 1:28
  Speaker 3: So this has been I'm really sorry for the people involved,
• 1:31
  Speaker 3: but for the rest of us, it has been. In
• 1:33
  Speaker 3: a year of really difficult news, the closest thing we've
• 1:36
  Speaker 3: come to light relief.
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: I have to say I agree. Even while the mushroom
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: trial was raging and the entire country was totally captivated
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: by that, you stayed true to being captivated by this issue.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: This is about Nagi Mahashi, Australia's favorite home cook, accusing
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: a Brisbane chef who goes by the name Brookie of
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: Brookie's Bakehouse of plagiarizing two of her recipes. Now we
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: need to be clear from the beginning that Brooke Bellamy
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: has denied plagiarizing Naguie Mahashi's work and says that recipes
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: like caramel Slice and Bucklova are very common. It's natural
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: for there to be similarities between two different kinds of recipes.
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: Take us back to when that scandal broke. What did
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: you first hear about it and what was your reaction.
• 2:26
  Speaker 3: I saw a small news item in which Nagi was
• 2:31
  Speaker 3: reported to have accused brook of copying her recipes. I
• 2:35
  Speaker 3: think is probably the best way of putting it, and
• 2:38
  Speaker 3: I thought, oh, that's interesting. You know, I grew up
• 2:41
  Speaker 3: where people would swap recipes around a lot, but often
• 2:44
  Speaker 3: they'd leave out an ingredient, you know, so there was
• 2:48
  Speaker 3: always that. But I thought, that's really interesting. This is
• 2:51
  Speaker 3: not something you hear about very often. And so I
• 2:54
  Speaker 3: then went on to the recipe tim EAT's website, which
• 2:57
  Speaker 3: I really hadn't looked at very much until then. I'd
• 2:59
  Speaker 3: heard about it, but I think I've gone beyond the
• 3:02
  Speaker 3: point of trying to find new recipes.
• 3:05
  Speaker 4: Watch how easy it is to make these incredible crispy
• 3:08
  Speaker 4: tie brook bites and sticky, limey sweet chili sauce. You
• 3:12
  Speaker 4: will never catch me turning salmon bites one by one
• 3:15
  Speaker 4: on the stove.
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: And I don't own an air friar.
• 3:18
  Speaker 4: I know, controversial, you guys, Look at this.
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: This is one of the best cakes I've made all year.
• 3:25
  Speaker 3: And there was quite a long post there, and I
• 3:28
  Speaker 3: noticed that comments have since been turned off, But there
• 3:31
  Speaker 3: was a really long post in which Nagi took the
• 3:34
  Speaker 3: two recipes Hers and Brookies, one for caramel slice and
• 3:39
  Speaker 3: one for black blah blah, and laid them out in
• 3:42
  Speaker 3: terms of ingredients, and then the instructions it followed, and
• 3:47
  Speaker 3: there are really when you look at it, even now
• 3:49
  Speaker 3: as we both are, there are seemed to be some
• 3:52
  Speaker 3: quite striking similarities. And I thought, well, I was quite interested,
• 3:56
  Speaker 3: how similar are these recipes because we know that aramal
• 4:00
  Speaker 3: slice has a lot fewer ingredients than say, abu klava.
• 4:03
  Speaker 3: So I've just gone through again and pulled out some
• 4:06
  Speaker 3: recipes for caramel slice, and there are quite a lot
• 4:11
  Speaker 3: of similarities between the two recipes compared to many others.
• 4:16
  Speaker 3: I mean, I pulled up Donna Hayes' chocolate caramel slice.
• 4:18
  Speaker 3: For example, she puts in spelt flower Now, even if
• 4:21
  Speaker 3: you don't use spelt flour, she puts one hundred and
• 4:24
  Speaker 3: forty grams of spelt flour. These two other recipes both
• 4:28
  Speaker 3: have one hundred and fifty grams. She puts in forty
• 4:31
  Speaker 3: grams of desiccated coconut. They both put in forty five
• 4:35
  Speaker 3: grams of desiccated coconut.
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  Speaker 2: So there are not that many ingredients.
• 4:40
  Speaker 3: But there seem to be a lot more similarities between
• 4:43
  Speaker 3: these two than any others that I could see in
• 4:45
  Speaker 3: the little flick through the internet that I did.
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  Speaker 1: The other similarity that I noticed, and that argument, how
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: she was pointing out, was in the formatting and the
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: wording of the instruction. So it's not just about the
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: quantities and the method, it's about the way the paragraphs
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: are formed.
• 5:00
  Speaker 3: Yes, and also in terms of strips, the strips of
• 5:03
  Speaker 3: Filo pastry for the backlaba, for example. It's really hard
• 5:06
  Speaker 3: to know where a recipe began, but I think we
• 5:09
  Speaker 3: can mostly accept that there is a tradition that we
• 5:15
  Speaker 3: don't know where any recipe began originally, but you do
• 5:18
  Speaker 3: acknowledge where you have received it from someone else.
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: I guess to publish a cookbook, it's unlike any other
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: kind of book, And of course you've written several books yourself,
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: you need to have a volume of recipes. I mean,
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: I've got five recipes of my own that I love
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: that I make all the time, that I know off
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: by heart, and that I've adapted. But it's certainly not
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: enough to fill a cookbook. Someone like Brook comes along
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: into the food world. She's a bit of an outsider.
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: She started a bakery and it's become viral on social media.
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: I have launched hundreds of new cookie flavors, but when
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: I tell you, this cookie is far superior to any
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: other cookie. I really mean it. I'm going to start
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: by using a white chocolate doughbase and then add a
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: generous amount of chopped pistachios. But I think it seems
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: to me as though she wants to be in the
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: main game of people who are acknowledged as influential Australian cooks.
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: She wants her book on people shelves, and it's also
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: another source of revenue. She needs a lot of recipes
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: for that, and so one of the possibilities here was
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: that she was familiar with Nagi's recipe, that they'd both
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: been influenced, perhaps by the same source, and that it's
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: just coincidental. Do you think that's possible.
• 6:26
  Speaker 4: Oh?
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  Speaker 2: Absolutely, I think it's possible.
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  Speaker 3: It's also possible that she forgot to acknowledge something if
• 6:32
  Speaker 3: indeed she did borrow from someone else. And I don't
• 6:35
  Speaker 3: think anyone says there is anything wrong in borrowing someone
• 6:38
  Speaker 3: else's recipe. In fact, I think many people would think
• 6:40
  Speaker 3: it's a great compliment to use their recipe. I know,
• 6:43
  Speaker 3: if someone makes something that I've passed on to them
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  Speaker 3: that was not my original recipe, but they may call it.
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  Speaker 2: I think I've said to you before.
• 6:50
  Speaker 3: There's a five minute brownie recipe that I've been making
• 6:52
  Speaker 3: for years. People I know that I've given it to
• 6:55
  Speaker 3: call it Fiona's Brownie's. I don't know anymore where I
• 6:57
  Speaker 3: got that recipe from, but I take it as a
• 6:59
  Speaker 3: great compliment that they associate that with me, because I
• 7:03
  Speaker 3: gave them a recipe that I took from somewhere else.
• 7:06
  Speaker 3: That gives them a lot of joy. Who knows where
• 7:09
  Speaker 3: anyone gets an idea from. I think a lot of
• 7:11
  Speaker 3: cooking is about getting inspired, and if you have to
• 7:13
  Speaker 3: do cooking every night at home, or if you have
• 7:16
  Speaker 3: to do enough cooking to fill up a book, you
• 7:19
  Speaker 3: will find information wherever you can, for whatever reasons you
• 7:23
  Speaker 3: might have to find it. And it's possible that you
• 7:26
  Speaker 3: forget sometimes where you found something. I think, though, the
• 7:31
  Speaker 3: underlying rule for me is that if I was writing
• 7:35
  Speaker 3: a recipe book, I think if I was passing on
• 7:38
  Speaker 3: a recipe, I would just acknowledge where I got it
• 7:40
  Speaker 3: from if I could remember it all.
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: I've noticed so many acknowledgments in other cookbooks since this
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: scandal blew up, and it did become the biggest thing
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: in Australian literary drama. Since Helen Demenden goes in vitry
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: for aud Nigella Laws is constantly acknowledging other chefs who've
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: given her recipes. Yourte Ottolini does the same thing. They'll
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: also acknowledge people who work for them or with them,
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: who have contributed valuable parts to a recipe. There's a
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: very rich tradition in cooking publishing, isn't there of acknowledgment?
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: I agree.
• 8:18
  Speaker 3: I saw on just a few minutes ago, I saw
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  Speaker 3: online I downloaded, for example, a recipe from a woman
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  Speaker 3: called Bonnie Joe Manion. I have no idea who she is,
• 8:26
  Speaker 3: but she has a recipe for autumn morning glory muffins. Now,
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  Speaker 3: I was doing this for research purposes. I was not
• 8:32
  Speaker 3: researching dinner at work. But Bonnie Joe Manions recipe for
• 8:36
  Speaker 3: autumn morning glory muffins says that she obtained this recipe
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  Speaker 3: from let me have a look here, I think it
• 8:43
  Speaker 3: was the Victoria magazine. So she says, this is from
• 8:47
  Speaker 3: my recently saved from the October twenty eighteen edition of
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  Speaker 3: Victoria Magazine. She also references the American cook Ininer Gartan,
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  Speaker 3: who almost also makes mourning glory muffins and whose recipe
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  Speaker 3: was in turn inspired by the muffins made at the
• 9:02
  Speaker 3: Mooring Glory Cafe on Nantucket. So within run recipe there
• 9:06
  Speaker 3: are basically three levels of acknowledgment. That might be a
• 9:09
  Speaker 3: bit of an overkill, but it's clear that this woman
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  Speaker 3: has been inspired by one recipe but also has picked
• 9:16
  Speaker 3: up inspiration from other people who have in turn picked
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  Speaker 3: up inspiration from someone else. It can be a bit ridiculous,
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  Speaker 3: but I think the message is acknowledged as often as
• 9:26
  Speaker 3: you can and really try not to forget.
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  Speaker 1: Have you ever had the experience of feeling as though
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: your work has been stolen or plagiarized, or that someone's
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: been influenced by your work without an acknowledgment.
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  Speaker 3: Yes, so there is a publication and I won't name
• 9:42
  Speaker 3: this publication, but I was so incensed. Look, there was
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  Speaker 3: a long tradition back in the probably late eighties early
• 9:50
  Speaker 3: nineties where other papers would often riff off your story.
• 9:54
  Speaker 3: We didn't have the Internet to check up as easily
• 9:57
  Speaker 3: in those days, but in the last few years had
• 10:00
  Speaker 3: occasion where a story of mine was basically republished and
• 10:04
  Speaker 3: the only acknowledgment was oh as reported by the Australian,
• 10:08
  Speaker 3: and I was so incensed that I tried to ring
• 10:12
  Speaker 3: the journalists who write this story. And ironically, this media
• 10:17
  Speaker 3: organization does not have phone numbers for its journalists and
• 10:20
  Speaker 3: there was no way that I could call this journalist.
• 10:23
  Speaker 3: But I think I did send an email saying this
• 10:26
  Speaker 3: is really not the way to behave you know, by
• 10:28
  Speaker 3: all means rewrite something, but don't republish my story and
• 10:31
  Speaker 3: think it's okay just to say, as reported by The Australian.
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: There's a whole economy of theft in journalism, of course,
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: and they call it aggregation. That's one of the nice
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: phrases that they use. There are entire mastheads that are
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: built on rewriting very lightly journalism that, for example, re published.
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: This is what the Daily Mail does quite unashamedly. They
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: have some reporters who are working on original journalism for
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: their Daily Mail Australia site. But there is also a
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: lot of rewriting and they'll do a token acknowledgment, sometimes
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: with a hyperlink back to the original story. But it
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: is enraging, and it's enraging that it's a business model.
• 11:06
  Speaker 3: I agree, But and in fact, if you just tweaked
• 11:09
  Speaker 3: it a little. You could and should change the whole
• 11:12
  Speaker 3: tone of it. If someone has written a really great story,
• 11:15
  Speaker 3: in the same way as someone has written a great recipe,
• 11:18
  Speaker 3: by all means, reproduce it, rewrite it however you like,
• 11:22
  Speaker 3: and acknowledge where it's come from, because in that case
• 11:26
  Speaker 3: you are not stealing or taking something from someone. You
• 11:30
  Speaker 3: are basically acknowledging the good work they've done and.
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: Spreading the word. And I think that's a great thing
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: to do.
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  Speaker 3: I think many journalists would agree that was good, and
• 11:39
  Speaker 3: I think many recipe writers would probably agree that was
• 11:42
  Speaker 3: good as well.
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: One of the great mysteries about plagiarism, and I've worked
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: in proximity to a couple of people who have ultimately
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: lost their jobs because they were caught plagiarizing other people's work,
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: is that it seems like a lot more effort than
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: just doing the journalism yourself. You know, journalism is not
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: rocket science. It's about going and talking to people and
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: writing down what they say, analyzing and interpreting what they say.
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: Doing that is grant work, and it's hard, and you
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: can apply all sorts of you know, love and care
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: to it all not so much at all, but going
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: and cribbing other people's work, cutting and pasting, and then
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: having to cover your tracks and worry that you might
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: get caught seems like a lot more if it than
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: it's worth.
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: Also, it's boring.
• 12:21
  Speaker 3: I mean, why be a journalist if you just want
• 12:23
  Speaker 3: to you know, if you're there presumably for the journalism,
• 12:26
  Speaker 3: not the journalism with ach. You know, most of us
• 12:30
  Speaker 3: are here because we're generally interested in what's going on
• 12:32
  Speaker 3: in the world. In the same way as you might
• 12:34
  Speaker 3: pursue a recipe because you want to have something terrific
• 12:36
  Speaker 3: for dinner, you want to get the best out of
• 12:39
  Speaker 3: something or someone. And why you would reproduce someone else's
• 12:43
  Speaker 3: words when you could have another angle speak to that
• 12:47
  Speaker 3: person yourself has never been quite clear to me.
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: What have been the consequences of this scandal for both
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: Nagi and Rookie Well.
• 13:00
  Speaker 3: Interesting, I considering how much noise there was when this
• 13:04
  Speaker 3: story came out a few months ago. I hadn't heard
• 13:07
  Speaker 3: much for a while, and I had a bit of
• 13:08
  Speaker 3: a look around in the last few days. The latest
• 13:11
  Speaker 3: news on Nagi's that she's got a lovely new kitchen,
• 13:14
  Speaker 3: which is congratulations, hope it's great and that's great for her,
• 13:18
  Speaker 3: And I read that Brooke has just secured something like
• 13:22
  Speaker 3: twenty five million dollars in funding from someone in Saudi
• 13:28
  Speaker 3: Arabia and someone else with connections to one of the emirates,
• 13:31
  Speaker 3: and looks set to open another one hundred stores, So
• 13:34
  Speaker 3: good luck to her. It sounds like, from what I
• 13:37
  Speaker 3: can see, there might have been some emotional costs for
• 13:39
  Speaker 3: both of them, but at the end of the year,
• 13:42
  Speaker 3: it sounds like things are pretty okay for both of them.
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: They're both vastly successful business women in their own right.
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: Nagi is absolutely beloved, as evidenced by the comments on
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: that original post. They were one hundred percent in support
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: of her, weren't they?
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: Absolutely?
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  Speaker 3: And my view from the beginning was it's this was
• 13:59
  Speaker 3: not a question about how much you like someone.
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: It's a question about what is right.
• 14:05
  Speaker 3: And as I have said from the outset, I think
• 14:08
  Speaker 3: you just need to acknowledge if you've got a recipe
• 14:11
  Speaker 3: from someone and you are publishing it, that you have
• 14:15
  Speaker 3: got that recipe from someone else. And I would hope
• 14:18
  Speaker 3: that I would do the same thing if I was
• 14:19
  Speaker 3: in that situation.
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: Coming up. So who won this bake off? I made
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: Brookies two cakes for two recent children's birthdays by Brookie.
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: I made her fluffy chocolate cake, which was fantastic, and
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: then I made a you know. I think it was
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: called the Ultimate Birthday cake, which was a disaster because
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: she said that it needed twenty five minutes in the oven.
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: I took it out after twenty five minutes and it
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: was still liquid.
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: Twenty five minutes never seems like enough time.
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: And it wasn't It needed more like fifty minutes. One
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: of the things about this drama is that it was
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: dismissed as a little bit of frivolity and a little
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: bit of fun. But for a start, this is about
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: very serious work by women that's often consumed by women,
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: So I think that's part of the reason why it
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: was dismissed. But also, when you're making a recipe, you've
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: gone out and spent quite a lot of money on
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: the ingredients, and it's for a birthday, for example, or
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: an important dinner, or you were just cooking for your
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: family and everyone's hungry. It does matter.
• 15:36
  Speaker 2: None of this is trivial.
• 15:37
  Speaker 3: The two women who were involved in this case have
• 15:40
  Speaker 3: both you know and great accolades to both of them
• 15:43
  Speaker 3: have both incredibly successful in what they do, so they
• 15:46
  Speaker 3: both have built big businesses up around them, which is terrific.
• 15:50
  Speaker 3: It's about courtesy, and I think people can also dismiss
• 15:53
  Speaker 3: that too easily in life. If it comes down to
• 15:56
  Speaker 3: acknowledging someone, we all need to be courteous as much
• 15:59
  Speaker 3: as possible. It's something that we're losing sight of these days.
• 16:03
  Speaker 3: There is a bit of fun to this story, but
• 16:04
  Speaker 3: I think it's I have to say I was surprised
• 16:07
  Speaker 3: from my reading of it to learn that there is
• 16:11
  Speaker 3: no such thing as sort of copyright over recipes. That
• 16:14
  Speaker 3: there aren't, as I understand, laws to protect you from
• 16:18
  Speaker 3: having exclusive use of a recipe. So providence is a
• 16:22
  Speaker 3: really interesting question. So maybe at the end of the day,
• 16:24
  Speaker 3: that's what it does come down to, is just basic
• 16:27
  Speaker 3: old fashioned courtesy. So hopefully, after what has been quite
• 16:32
  Speaker 3: a difficult year for many people, people could perhaps make
• 16:36
  Speaker 3: some bucklava, make some caramel slices, add some sweetness to
• 16:40
  Speaker 3: your life, and hopefully twenty twenty six will be sweet
• 16:43
  Speaker 3: for all of us.
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: Well, I'm going to be making Fiona's brownie is I.
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: Hope five minutes they're worth it.
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: Thanks for Janna Pleasure Fiona Hirari is a senior writer
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: with The Australian. She's one of our most soulful, smart
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: and razor sharp reporters. You can check out her journalism
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: anytime at the Australian dot com. A happy new year
• 17:11
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• 17:13
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