What copyright does and doesn't protect in a recipe post, and how to credit and adapt other people's recipes the right way. Plain, general information for food bloggers.
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You found a great recipe on another blog, made it three times, and tweaked it until it felt like yours. Can you post it? And can anyone stop someone else from posting yours? If you’ve ever wondered whether you can copyright a recipe, the answer is “partly”, and the useful part is knowing which pieces are protected and which aren’t.
This guide explains it in plain terms for food bloggers. It covers what copyright protects in a recipe post, what it doesn’t, and how to credit and adapt other people’s recipes the right way.
Please note: this is general information, not legal advice. It’s based on guidance from the U.S. Copyright Office, and the rules differ from country to country. If you have a real dispute or a book deal on the table, talk to a lawyer who works in copyright.
Not the recipe itself, but you can protect how you write about it.
The U.S. Copyright Office says a plain list of ingredients isn’t protected by copyright. Copyright covers creative expression, not facts, ideas, methods or processes. “2 cups flour, 1 tsp baking soda, 1 cup sugar” is a list of facts. So is the basic idea of browning butter before you add it to cookie dough.
The same guidance says there may be protection when a recipe comes with substantial written expression, such as an explanation or directions written in your own words, or when recipes are gathered into a collection like a cookbook. So the dish isn’t yours to own, but your writing about it can be.
Put simply: someone can make your recipe and write it up themselves. They can’t copy and paste your post, your method text or your pictures.
Even when copying an ingredient list is technically allowed, the food blogging community has strong norms about credit. Readers notice, and so do other bloggers. Lifting someone’s recipe without a word of thanks can cost you goodwill that took years to build.
The good news is that doing it properly is easy. Credit the source, change what you change, and write it in your own words.
A common approach among food bloggers uses three simple labels. They aren’t legal terms, just a clear way to tell readers where a recipe came from.
Use this when you’re sharing someone else’s recipe as it is, with no real changes. Ask the author first. Many bloggers and cookbook publishers are happy to say yes, especially if you link back and write your own intro.
Use this when you started from someone else’s recipe and changed it in meaningful ways: different ratios, new ingredients, a different technique. Name the source and link to it. This is the label most food bloggers use most often.
Use this when another recipe gave you the idea, but your version is mostly your own: different ingredients, different method, written from scratch. A link is still a kind thing to do.
Wherever you can, link to the original post rather than the blog’s homepage. It helps readers find it, and it’s the polite way to say thank you.
Adapting is how most cooking works, at home and in restaurant kitchens. Here’s how to do it well on your blog.
Make the original as written at least once. Then you know what you’re changing and why. Your notes from that test become the heart of your post.
This is the most important step. Don’t copy the original directions and swap a few words. Close the other tab, cook from your own notes, and write the steps the way you’d explain them to a friend at your stove. Add the visual cues you noticed, like “until the edges are golden”, and the timings that worked in your kitchen.
If you’d like a framework, our guide on writing recipes like a professional kitchen walks through one action per step, visual cues and yields.
Tell readers what you changed and why. “I cut the sugar by a quarter and added orange zest” is useful, honest and clearly your own writing. It also shows you’ve actually made the dish.
Always. Even if the recipe is barely changed, the pictures must be yours, or used with written permission.
You can’t stop people from cooking your recipes, and you wouldn’t want to. That’s the point of publishing them. But you can make your work clearly yours.
Scrumptious keeps crediting simple. Every recipe card has an Adapted from link and name under Details in the recipe editor. Fill them in and the card shows “Adapted from” with a link at the end. It’s also added to your Google recipe data as the original source, so search engines can see the link too. See the recipe editor and Google recipe data for details.
With Scrumptious Pro, you can import from a link. Paste the address of a recipe page and the card fills in, with the “Adapted from” credit added for you. It’s handy for moving recipes from your own old site, or for starting an adaptation. Photos are off by default, and you should only bring them in from your own recipes or with the owner’s permission. Then rewrite the method and intro in your own words before you publish.
Writing your own recipe from scratch? Type or paste it the way you wrote it, and Paste & Parse sorts it into ingredients, steps, times and servings.
Do those five things and you’ll be on solid ground, both with the rules and with the food blogging community.
