Recipes are everywhere. From printed cookbooks and old family recipe boxes to magazines, newspapers, and websites, there are countless sources for discovering new dishes that become family favorites.
When we find a new recipe, we often tweak it to suit our tastes. This might mean eliminating certain ingredients, adding new ones, adjusting quantities, or simplifying the steps. These modifications are how we make a recipe our own.
The Family Cookbook Project makes it easy to compile these personalized recipes into your own family cookbook. You can type them in, copy and paste from a document or website, or upload an image of the recipe. This way, all your favorite recipes are gathered in one beautifully printed cookbook.
However, it’s important to give credit to the original creators of the recipes. In your personal notes, be sure to include the source of the original recipe. While recipes themselves generally can’t be copyrighted, photos can be. If you use a photo from the original recipe, mark the recipe as private until you can replace the photo with one of your own.
For more information on copyrighting recipes, check out these resources:
Bill Rice is Founder and Co-Publisher of the Family Cookbook Project, a website that helps families and individuals collect, preserve and share food memories by creating their own printed personal cookbooks. He is the author of The Wellfleet Oyster Cookbook and the Cape Cod Cocktail Cookbook (Available on Amazon), both created using FamilyCookbookProject.com. He is also editor of the Donovan Family Cookbook, now it’s third printing.
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