[Sca-cooks] When is it Plagiarism and When is it a Redaction?

lilinah at earthlink.net lilinah at earthlink.net
Mon Feb 8 11:21:33 PST 2010


From: Elise Fleming <alysk at ix.netcom.com>
>  I have been reading someone's work where the person
>  says that the item is their "redaction" from someone else's recipe.
>  The differences between the original and the "redaction" are (to me)
>  exceedingly minor. What would you say?

Doc <edoard at medievalcookery.com> wrote:
>I've grown to loath the word "redaction", mostly because of it being
>used in this manner.  In this particular case I think "variation" would
>be the best choice of words, with "interpretation" as a distant second
>choice.

More and more i've been leaning to "worked out recipe" vs. "original 
recipe". Yeah, it's long and perhaps unwieldy. But i think it is more 
specific and makes what i mean a little clearer.

Of your two choices, Doc, i much prefer "interpretation", because 
that's exactly what a modern-style worked out recipe is, a cook's 
interpretation of a generally less specific historical recipe.

To me, a "variation" would be one of several things.
- For one, it could be substituting one somewhat similar ingredient 
for another, for example, chard in a recipe originally calling for 
spinach, or beef in a recipe originally calling for lamb, or honey 
for sugar, or whole wheat flour for white flour.
- Second, it could be adding an ingredient not in the original 
recipe, for example, raspberries to a recipe for a chocolate cake, or 
cinnamon and nutmeg to a recipe for vanilla pudding.
- Third, it could be changing the cooking method, say, cooking 
something in a covered pan in the oven rather than on a burner on top 
of the stove, or grilling rather than pan frying.
And i'm sure cooks on this list can think of more kinds of "variations".

However, i don't consider a recipe for 'Honeyed Carrots', in some 
convoluted manner supposedly 'derived' from Compost, to be a 
variation or interpretation. To me it is a grotesque 
misrepresentation of an historical recipe.

I may still use "redaction" on SCA-Cooks, since we know what we mean. 
But when writing to other lists and posting elsewise on the web, i've 
begun using "worked out recipe".
-- 
Urtatim [that's err-tah-TEEM]
the persona formerly known as Anahita


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