Neocolours Recipe Exchange?

[Jazzy]

I'd say post recipes from cookbooks, but if you know they're from a cookbook, give the book credit. Same goes for web sources: if you know your scones come from, say, Anthony Worrall Thompson on the BBC site, say so.

[Twofold Black]

(dunno about other counties, but in US it's apparently not clear that recipes are protected by copyright)

Technically I believe any sequence of words is copyrightable, but the ideas conveyed by such a sequence are not (they may be considered intellectual property but that's a different kettle of fish). So you could write a book with exactly the same plot as some other existing book that is still within copyright, but as long as all the prose was original you'd be fine, legally. So it is, I expect, with recipes.

As for a recipe exchange, count me in.

[Wingsrising]

(dunno about other counties, but in US it's apparently not clear that recipes are protected by copyright)

Technically I believe any sequence of words is copyrightable, but the ideas conveyed by such a sequence are not (they may be considered intellectual property but that's a different kettle of fish).

That's basically my understanding. You might be able to copyright the exact wording of the recipe, but the recipe itself -- the ingredients, the techniques, how the thing is made -- that you can't.

Actually poking around Google it sounds like there are a few chefs who would like to be able to copyright recipes and a lot more who don't (since borrowing from each other is basically what chefs DO).

[Fjorab_Teke]

I don't cook much at all if I can get away with it, but one day I got creative with some huge green bell peppers Mom and I found she had forgotten in her herb garden. Anyway, I may not be entirely interested in the recipes, but I'll gladly join in. I might discover something yummy and easy to make as well as share some of my "experiments that turned out great" with you including the one the above scenario led to. Too bad my favorite pumpkin pie recipe is from a cookbook (or other publication from somewhere, maybe Dear Abby), but I could look it up too.

[Sagrei]

Ooooh. I'm in. I know how to make about.... five things... and I'd love to learn more cooking.

Is this all gonna be big fancy stuff, or can I throw in my student-friendly Five Minute Lo Mein too?

[Jessi]

I think recipes from books should be fine - some of our best recipes are from books and magazine articles, heh.

I also agree with Jazzy - I think all recipes submitted should be ones you have at least tried once, that way you can at least tell us you thought it was good instead of it just being some random recipe you thought sounded tasty but never tried.

Anyone else have any suggestions? :3 I'll come up with a recipe form to fill out soon otherwise!

[Goldenchaos]

Awesome. Ill have to give you guys my mom's recipet for flan.

[Aurinona]

This sounds interesting- I'll have to go digging for recipes, or potentially find things to write down- a lot of my cooking involves major substitutions, or combining a few different recipes into one, or just a general lack of measuring ingredients during the process. Or laziness - no recipe for premade frozen pizza. XD (Though I do have a friend who messed one up and then complained that the box didn't say "remove cardboard before baking"...)

[EofS]

(Though I do have a friend who messed one up and then complained that the box didn't say "remove cardboard before baking"...)

Over here they always say "remove all packaging", perhaps for precisely that reason ;0)

Regarding the bilingual ingredients matter, I wonder if the neatest way to handle it would be to have a section at the end of the form for "any known alternative terms" so that they don't muddle up the ingredients list itself. But perhaps with a neater name than that ;0)

Eg, if I decided for some bizarre reason to give you a generic recipe for a Victoria sponge:

4oz butter/margarine
4oz sugar
2 eggs
4oz self-raising flour

Double cream
Strawberry jam
Icing sugar

1) Cream butter and sugar
2) Add eggs one at a time, including a little flour with each
3) Add rest of flour
4) Pour into greased and floured cake tins
5) Bake until golden brown and slightly shrinking from the sides. Cool
6) Whip the cream until it forms stiff peaks
7) Sandwich together the two sponges with the jam and whipped cream
8) Dust icing sugar on top
9) Eat. Yum, cake!

Known/suspected alternate terms:
I think this might be known as "yellow cake" in the US, here in the UK it's just called "sponge cake" - the cream and jam filling is what makes it a Victoria sponge.
Self-raising flour - I believe "cake flour" would be appropriate?
Sugar - I mean caster sugar, aka "superfine sugar"
Double cream - Wikipedia should help you find a local equivalent
Strawberry jam - is it still called jelly if it has bits in it? You want the stuff with seeds ideally
Icing sugar - "confectioners sugar" or "powdered sugar"

Or perhaps we could just encourage people to put such translations in a notes section at the end.

[Wingsrising]

Nope, cake flour refers to the level of gluten in the flour. You could probably use cake flour in this, but if you didn't also add leavening you'd end up with a very flat cake. In the US it's called self-rising flour. I've never used it, but you can substitute all-purpose flour and leavening -- the Internet can tell you how.

There's apparently no US equivalent of double cream -- double cream has even more fat than US "heavy cream" does. But heavy cream makes perfectly good whipped cream.

That was fun.

Interesting. To a certain extent people can clearly do their own conversions, but it's also clear that you could run into trouble that way: in the US sugar always means standard sugar, if superfine sugar is meant then it would say so. So, I never would have realized that line needed conversion if you hadn't said so. (Though I suspect this would turn out just fine with normal sugar, just with a slightly different texture.)

This could be an interesting cultural lesson for all concerned.

[Twofold Black]

In the US it's called self-rising flour. I've never used it, but you can substitute all-purpose flour and leavening -- the Internet can tell you how.

Dead easy: it's just a teaspoon or so of baking powder and a pinch of salt to one cup of flour. For most things I'd need to substitute self-rising flour in I would probably use cake flour.

[EofS]

Nope, cake flour refers to the level of gluten in the flour. You could probably use cake flour in this, but if you didn't also add leavening you'd end up with a very flat cake. In the US it's called self-rising flour. I've never used it, but you can substitute all-purpose flour and leavening -- the Internet can tell you how.

Ooh, interesting. I had assumed incorrectly then. Here it's just plain flour, self-raising flour and strong flour, the final also known as bread flour. So I had figured that "cake flour" which I had heard of/seen in recipes would be the equivalent to self-raising.

There's apparently no US equivalent of double cream -- double cream has even more fat than US "heavy cream" does.

That's why I decided to link to the page ;0) I actually hate cream so I couldn't really comment much.

Interesting. To a certain extent people can clearly do their own conversions, but it's also clear that you could run into trouble that way: in the US sugar always means standard sugar, if superfine sugar is meant then it would say so. So, I never would have realized that line needed conversion if you hadn't said so.

That's basically what I was thinking when I decided to translate everything I could think of - if I didn't know it was exactly the same (I think we all agree on what an egg is, more or less) then I tried to add a conversion note. An easy way to tell if in doubt is usually to check wiki - it tends to state to where the usage is confined.

[daisybell]

There's apparently no US equivalent of double cream -- double cream has even more fat than US "heavy cream" does.

That's why I decided to link to the page ;0) I actually hate cream so I couldn't really comment much.

This causes no end of trouble when you're making ice cream from an American recipe using British ingredients, especially when the recipes mix together various different dairy products to get the right milk fat amount- we don't have half and half, all our cream has different fat percentages, and cream is sold in British pints and fractions thereof- 5, 10 and 20 fl oz cartons, when the recipes call for things in sensible amounts for American shoppers.

People must be careful if their recipe says "a can of" since our standard can sizes might be different- I've had this problem with old recipes before, too, when it says "a small can of condensed milk" without saying exactly how small this is. Condensed milk only comes in one size of can that I've ever seen, but obviously it used to come in more than one size. (Do you even have condensed milk in the US? Yes, you do, according to Wikipedia, because it was developed there.) I think also that we tend to buy things in smaller quantities in this country, or rather, that small quantities are available, whereas in previous cookery related discussions I recall people mentioning extremely large quantities of flour being bought for a domestic setting in the US.

[Wingsrising]

Yes, even in the US using a US recipe it's annoying when something says "a can of X" since the typical can size changes over time.

Is condensed milk in the UK sweetened? We have sweetened condensed milk in the US.

Fun fact: you can make dulce de leche by putting a can of sweetened consensed milk in a pan filled with water and simmering for several hours. The longer you simmer it, the stiffer it becomes. For dipping apples in it I tend to simmer it for maybe 2 hours. Watch out when you open the can, though -- hot dulce de leche spurts everywhere! Also, don't let the pan boil all the way dry or your dulce de leche will burn.

I buy flour in 5-pound bags. I don't usually think of that as being an extremely large quantity but that may just be because it's what I'm used to.

[Jazzy]

It's a very large quantity to English people; flour here is sold in 500g (1.1 lbs), 1kg (2.2lbs) and 1.5kg (3.3lbs) bags. 1kg is usually only organic flour, for some reason. This is a point, actually - American recipes involving flour tend to call for a lot more flour than English recipes, probably because of the standard bag sizes. For example, my American cinnamon bun recipe, not scaled down, uses a whole 500g bag of flour, which would make enough sponge cake to serve 20 people.