Jessica Seinfeld's recipes stir up plagiarism accusations

Jessica Seinfeld 's cookbook publisher is steamed at accusations that her recipes are another writer's leftovers.

Seinfeld's new "Deceptively Delicious," about hiding healthy ingredients in foods children will eat, is already the best-selling book in the country, with print runs of 2.5 million through January.

But chef and baby-products mogul Missy Chase Lapine came out in April with a book, "The Sneaky Chef: Simple Strategies for Hiding Healthy Foods in Kids' Favorite Meals." Lapine baked her spinach brownies with Al Roker on the "Today" show; Seinfeld shared her spinach brownies with Oprah on that show last week.

Mothers on Oprah.com and parenting sites have noted similarities after perusing the puree-spattered pages of both. Some wondered whether the wealthy Seinfeld didn't have cooks who helped cook up her recipes.

Seinfeld writes about having an epiphany that, "While I was cooking dinner, pureeing butternut squash for the baby and making mac and cheese for the rest of us, I had the crazy idea of stirring a little of the puree into the macaroni. ... The colors matched -you couldn't really see the squash in there -and the texture was perfect."

Lapine, who founded the Baby Spa natural products line, writes: "If you want to hide something in macaroni and cheese, you have to match the color of the dish. You could easily introduce white bean puree in the mac and cheese."

Seinfeld and Lapine both have recipes for mashed potatoes with hidden cauliflower, grilled cheese with secret sweet potatoes, green eggs made with pureed baby spinach, and carrot-laced tacos.

Lapine stayed hidden herself when we called, but Craig Herman, an executive at her publisher, Running Press, said ominously: "I won't be able to comment until next week."

But Seinfeld's publisher, Steve Ross, was buoyant as he noted that Collins U.S. had six printing presses going full time to keep up with demand and told us: "Jessica Seinfeld's work is completely and entirely original and stems from her own personal experience cooking for her own three children and husband. We all know children will see healthy food and run in the other direction. We have full confidence in the originality of Jessica's recipes. We have been involved in creating the content of this book for almost two years."

Ross did admit that Lapine's agent had submitted her book to them "in May of 2006, but it was rejected." The parent HarperCollins imprint had yet another book in the genre, "Lunch Lessons: Changing the Way We Feed Our Children," Ross explained.

As for whether Seinfeld actually toils over a hot stove, Ross said: "Well, I can tell you that she cooked [mac and cheese and meatballs] for us, and it was delicious. And we've heard from Jerry that he's been a guinea pig."

A spokesman for Seinfeld said, "She admits she didn't invent pureeing. But she never saw the [Lapine] book. And she worked really hard on hers."

Re: Jessica Seinfeld's recipes stir up plagiarism accusations

That's so funny.

I went on Amazon the other day and typed in "seinfeld" to find her book and The Sneaky Chef book popped up first.

I thought "Oh, this must be the 2nd one she's written."

But then there were no ties to her.

I ultimately ordered her book, not the Sneaky Chef one, but I kept wondering how she was selling something someone already did 6 months ago.

Re: Jessica Seinfeld's recipes stir up plagiarism accusations

I ordered them both just to see if there is any real difference between them. We'll see.

Re: Jessica Seinfeld's recipes stir up plagiarism accusations

I think it's pretty coincidental that Lupine's book was rejected by the same publisher and had the same concept.

It's all about the money. Putting Seinfeld's name on it sells more.

Re: Jessica Seinfeld's recipes stir up plagiarism accusations

I came across Lupine's book in B&N and it looked like hers was put out first..and it did have a lot of the same recipes Jessica used. I found that really interesting..that she got so much publicity for it. Oh well that's America for ya!

Message edited 10/19/2007 9:56:29 AM.