In Nagi Maehashi’s first interview since the plagiarism row erupted, she admits to feeling scared, and says people are combing her site for examples of her own copy-cat recipes.
RecipeTin Eats founder and Good Food columnist Nagi Maehashi has confirmed the late Bill Granger is another author whose work she believes has been plagiarised by baker Brooke Bellamy in her book Bake with Brooki.
One of Australia’s most popular recipe writers, Maehashi made allegations on April 29 of copyright infringements by Penguin Random House, the publisher of Bellamy’s book, claiming the author, influencer and bakery owner stole two recipes from her website and from “other authors, including cookbooks”.
Bellamy strenuously denies the allegations, making a statement via her lawyers.
“I do not copy other people’s recipes,” she says. “Like many bakers, I draw inspiration from the classics, but the creations you see at Brooki Bakehouse reflect my own experience, taste and passion for baking, born of countless hours of my childhood spent in my home kitchen with Mum.”
In an exclusive interview with Good Food, Maehashi confirmed social media speculation that Bake with Brooki may have copied “virtually word for word” the Portuguese tart recipe from Granger’s 2006 cookbook Every Day.
“It is so blatant to me that the wording in the method part of the recipe is copied almost exactly. To me, it is the biggest and strongest example of plagiarism that I have seen by this author,” Maehashi says.
“I was so shocked when I saw it. Bill is an icon of the Australian food scene. When I became aware of it, I knew that including it in my statement would make it stronger but I left it out at the request of Bill’s family.”
Maehashi admits to feeling scared and nervous in the midst of an internet storm over her allegations and says she is being trolled by people combing her recipes to find examples of plagiarism on her website.
She says the reason she has gone public with her allegations is because “I want people to take responsibility for their actions and to remind influencers and publishers that stealing work is not OK”.
Sally McKenney, the US-based baker behind the Sally’s Baking Addiction website, has also alleged her vanilla cake recipe was used by Bellamy after a tip-off by Maehashi.
Jane Morrow, publishing director of Murdoch Books, said “we are aware of the allegations of plagiarism involving the uncredited use of a recipe by Bill Granger. We take any suggestion that his work has been reproduced without acknowledgement seriously. We are currently reviewing the concerns raised.”
Granger’s widow, Natalie, who continues to run the cafe and restaurant empire built by the famed Sydney chef after he died in December 2023, has been contacted by Good Food but chose not to comment.
Maehashi says she alerted Penguin months ago about the similarities between two of her recipes − caramel slice and baklava − along with Granger’s Portuguese custard tart, and the recipes printed in Bake with Brooki.
“They refused to take responsibility and they have not done anything proactive to remedy this other than to quietly offer to replace the recipes in future reprints. All they have done is deny,” Maehashi says.
I am not a martyr. I am not pretending I am pure, but this is of a magnitude that I felt I had to speak up.
Nagi Maehashi
It has historically been difficult to prove recipe plagiarism, especially when recipes such as baklava, caramel slice and Portuguese custard tarts are not original ideas but versions of traditional recipes that have been tweaked and replicated thousands of times.
Maehashi says she is not across the fine details of copyright infringement, though she has engaged a lawyer specialising in intellectual property, but she says it is the fact that some phrases in the method section of Bellamy’s recipes in her view “appear to have been literally copied and pasted from the originals” that sparked her to speak out.
“That is what stood out to me. If you strip the [legal] talk about recipe plagiarism and just look at the [fundamental meaning of] plagiarism … that is what I am objecting to,” she says.
In a statement published to the RecipeTin Eats website on Tuesday, Maehashi said she was no stranger to her recipes being copied online, but was shocked to see their reproduction in such a highly publicised book.
“My recipes [were] printed in a book launched with a huge publicity campaign from one of Australia’s biggest publishers,” she said. “It has sold over $4.6 million worth of sales in under six months.”
This masthead does not suggest the accusations of plagiarism are true, only that they have been made.
Penguin has denied the allegations, “stating (via their lawyers) ‘our client respectfully rejects your client’s allegations and confirms that the recipes in [Bake With Brooki] were written by Brooke Bellamy’,” according to a post on Maehashi’s Instagram page.
Bellamy also said in her statement via her lawyers “while baking has leeway for creativity, much of it is a precise science and is necessarily formulaic. Many recipes are bound to share common steps and measures: if they don’t, they simply don’t work.
“My priority right now is to ensure the welfare of the fantastic team at Brooki Bakehouse and that of my family.”
Maehashi says that if Penguin had admitted there was a problem when she contacted them last year, she would have “let it go” and not gone public.
“The thing that really bothered me is that they did not take responsibility no matter how many examples I showed them.”
“I could not sleep knowing what I knew. I am not a martyr. I am not pretending I am pure but this is of a magnitude that I felt I had to speak up. I am not after money.”
