![]() Lapine’s recipe for “Mystery Mashed Potatoes” specifies “White Puree,” which is a separate recipe earlier in the book that consists of cauliflower, zucchini, and lemon juice. For example, Seinfeld’s recipe, titled “Mashed Potatoes,” calls for simple cauliflower puree. And a handful of recipes employ some of the same obvious tricks (mostly based on hue, such as hiding sweet potato puree in a grilled cheese sandwich or spinach in brownies). (And in all the articles I’ve found about this tempest in a teapot, not one has pointed to a specific example of plagiarism.) Sure, the two books are based on the same unremarkable, unoriginal idea. ![]() Spend 10 minutes comparing the Seinfeld and Lapine books, and you won’t be able to seriously contend that there is plagiarism. The idea of sneaking vegetables into kids’ food is a time-honored parenting trick, and Lapine’s book was not the first: The largely unsung book Sneaky Veggies by Chris Fisk, for example, came out in August of 2006. To those unfamiliar with the world of book publishing, this may seem meaningful, but it’s very unlikely that anybody at HarperCollins would have leaked the Lapine proposal to the Seinfeld team, particularly since the premise of the Lapine book is not original, either. Much has been made of the fact that Lapine originally showed her book proposal to HarperCollins and that HarperCollins rejected it, only to sign up Seinfeld soon after. In fact, Seinfeld’s agent told CBS that her book was already being bound when Lapine’s came out. However, I have no relationship with anybody involved in the Seinfeld project, and I write my own books.) There was simply not enough time to incorporate Lapine’s work into Seinfeld’s. (Disclosure: Seinfeld’s book was published by HarperCollins, which is also my publisher. Lapine’s book came out in April, and Seinfeld’s came out in October. ![]() Cookbooks take a year or more to produce. Jessica Seinfeld, however, has done no such thing.įor starters, the timeline is all wrong. Chef Wickens, by serving those dishes without acknowledging their inventors, was committing culinary plagiarism. (You can compare the photographs here.) These dishes were not common, like French onion soup or Peach Melba, but were, rather, original creations of three of the most cutting-edge chefs working today. They were carbon copies, right down to their arrangements on the plate and, in a couple of cases, the use of identical, specially ordered serving pieces. Interlude’s dishes were not just inspired by WD-50, Minibar, and Alinea. ![]()
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