recipe contests

[LisaS]

for those of you who have entered recipe contests - how much of a recipe has to be your own invention to qualify as an original?

What I'm thinking is this - there are some things that have pretty standard ingredients and proportions - so how much can you base an original recipe off a standard recipe and then how much has to be your original twist on it? What about something that you make that you might have originally followed a published recipe but it is now so many years later with your own tweaks that it is hard to know if it is yours or not?

For the first question, I'm thinking something like a cheesecake or pie - how different and unique would you have to be - can you start from a standard recipe for a cheesecake and then riff off of it for flavor variations? Or different does my French apple pie need to be from Betty Crocker's to enter a pie contest?

I generally make up recipes for savory w/out a proiblem as far as sauces and flavors - same with salads - but if I were to bake something... are there guidelines or rules of thumb?

[Gaelen]

Lisa, a lot of the answer depends on the contest.
For instance, for most of the basic NY state fair classes, the recipe does *not* have to be original, as in I-thought-this-up-from-scratch. The main consideration is that no mixes or prepared ingredients can be used...and that line isn't always as darkly drawn as it should be. For instance, if you make a phyllo pie, are you required to make your own phyllo? No. If you make a cherry pound cake, can you use commercially dried cherries? Yes. Can you use canned cherries in juice? Yes. Can you use commercial cherry pie filling? Ummm...no. If you make lemon custard pie, can you use ReaLemon commercial lemon juice instead of fresh juice? Yes, if you must. Can you use lemon Jello? No, not unless the contest is being sponsored by Jello. ;)

In fact, a lot of entrants search out recipes and 'try' them at the fair. Others are entering old family recipes. I have been known to make up my recipe for the next day in the aisles of the supermarket the night before, based on what fresh ingredients look good and what tastes I like to combine. My tastes aren't always what the judges like...but my overriding criteria for anything I enter is that it has to first taste good, and second it has to push the envelope of what they'll be expecting or challenge them with a new taste.

OTOH, most of the 'special' contests want an original recipe, so for them it's mandatory to make sure that my recipe is at least unique, along with tasting good. My recipe for Baked Beans Florentine uses white beans, mixed fresh or dried herbs, chopped garlic, onion, sweet pepper, mushrooms, spinach, sour cream, mayo, and I topped it with buttered bread crumbs. I have no idea where I got that recipe; I've had it for a long time.

When I converted it to low carb, I made it with black soybeans, and topped it with buttered ground nuts or buttered low carb crackers, and that alone is enough of a change to make it 'original' from the first recipe I used. ;) The other thing that would make it original is removing ingredients (no mushrooms, for instance) or changing the spinach to Italian green beans. Since you can't copyright a list of ingredients (only the directions for combining them or the collection of recipes in which they all appear, as a work in total), then there's no reason to sweat whether changing one ingredient or five ingredients is what will make something original--it's hwo you write up your DIRECTIONS that defines originality. So for contests, I always spell out in my directions how and when to use each ingredient, by name. Then, if that recipe wins, I can still 'retain' use of my recipe by putting my name in the title, and by changing the directions from 'combine the spinach, onion, sweet red pepper, garlic and herbs' to 'combine all of the vegetables.' Viola, a new recipe. Hidden Valley has their version of my best work, and I have my own. ;)

The thing is, I've combined variations of those ingredients for so long I'm not sure I truly made it up...so before I converted it for the Hidden Valley Ranch Family Friendly Foods contest, I actually searched the recipes on their website to make sure there was nothing similar. You don't want to send in something exactly like what has won in recent years, or what appears on their website. Then I went to Epicurious, recipe*zaar, allrecipes, foodtv and all of the places I typicaly use, and searched on the ingredients. I used that google tool that lets you put in ingredients and pulls up recipes that use them. And I got nothing--one hit for a church-supper casserole that used cream of mushroom soup, cannellini beans, and spinach, but none of the other ingredients. So I was pretty confident that the recipe was as close to 'original' as it could be.

Some baking recipes I've had forever, and since those are more of a formula, it's harder to improvise. But one example...my grandma made molasses cake with just six ingredients (blackstrap molasses, eggs, buttermilk, flour, baking soda and hot water.) I changed up the buttermilk to sour milk, yogurt or kefir (whatever I've got on hand) and change the water to hot coffee, and the all-purpose white flour to combos of vital wheat gluten and coconut flour, VWG + almond meal, and VWG + oat flour (the most successful so far.) She made hers in an 8-inch square pan...I make mine in a 9-inch glass pie plate or, when it's an upside-down cake, in a springform pan on top of cranberries cooked briefly in cinnamon and orange juice.

Some of my ingredients are different, but the bottom line is that my directions (the thing you can actually copyright) aren't that different from Grandma's directions. The critical thing that makes this cake work is that you use a soured dairy product which has a reaction with the baking soda dissolved in the hot liquid. My ingredients have evolved--believe me, the change from water to coffee makes a huge taste difference--and on their face, they're different recipes. But any good baker will recognize that basic gingerbread/molasses cake recipe, because it's been around for more than 50 years. I think it originally appeared on the label of a molasses bottle. The only really 'original' thing I did with it was dump it over a base of fruit cooked in orange juice to create an upside down molasses cake...which did dramatically change the character of the original recipe.

I think with your cheesecake, starting with basics and then 'riffing on a flavor variation' would be exactly the way to go--do something different, something unexpected. As for your French apple pie...sometimes judges like things that make something like that unique, and other times, what they really like is a traditional recipe rendered perfectly (not unlike that 6-ingredient gingerbread) to which you remain true but use hot coffee instead of water to deepen the flavor.

Hope that helps.