The registration thing is broken.. I am logged in and can't vote.

I can't vote either and I'm logged in. I will share most of my recipes and even give variations of what I do. The one that I will not share is my great-grandmother's pound cake recipe...

Yes, I share recipes... But I cannot share the techniques I've developed over twenty years working with some fantastic cooks and bakers. Recipes are blueprints.. Yours should not be exactly like mine, it might even be better!

My grandmother made the most amazing cabbage rolls. When I asked for the recipe she would always say no, that if she gave me the recipe I wouldn't need to come to her house anymore. The last time I asked she had forgotten that she ever made cabbage rolls. I have tried many times to replicate her recipe but of course I can never get it right, so I guess it's gone forever. She missed an opportunity to be remembered with fondness. I always share my recipes and hope that whoever makes them will think of me.

Aww Nannypoo that is sad... definitely a good incentive to share.

I always share recipes. One friend gave me her family's secret recipe for a corn casserole and told me to just make sure her parents never found out she gave it to me. I've been asked for it a few times and given it, but not to anyone who knows her parents :)

It depends...I am a whole lot less likely to share something that is inherently MY recipe. Recipes that I collect and try and people ask for I have no problem with though as it isn't uniquely mine.

To solve the problem that NANNYPOO had with her grandmother, I DO write down all the "secret recipes" I have in a notebook that my one daughter that cooks will inherit eventually. There are also many classic family recipes that she grew up on included in there so that family history of food does not disappear when I'm gone.

I always share recipes, because pretty much they all come from books or the internet. I tweak, and share my tweaks, but I don't come up with 100% original recipes very often.

Who would ever charge a friend for a recipe?

I'm always changing my recipes anyway, so like CJMForFun said, they're more of a blueprint. Especially the ones I come up with on my own, for which the recipes are generally estimates anyway.

That being said, there are people out there who I just know would "steal" the recipe and claim it as their own without giving credit to the originator of the recipe. Which is why I always write down where I get recipes from (cookbooks, websites, family members) when recording them in my master cookbooks. Lol.

I think it's very silly not to share them. Each cook has a personal touch and I bet even if you follow a recipe to a T, it won't taste exactly like the original. Unless we're talking about a professional chef's recipes, I don't understand why people want to keep them secret.

I voted "Sure!" but I always have to add a caveat: most of my recipes are improvised to begin with, and many of them never get written down. If I jot it down for you, I'll have to estimate amounts. (And if I have written it down and tested the amounts, I probably also posted it on my blog, so you don't even have to ask!)

Much more successful: let's make it together sometime so you can see what I mean by "a slosh of sherry" or "a handful of basil."

Knowledge is meant to be shared. I cannot stand people who wont share a recipe; it's petty and childish.

I agree with @CJMFORFUN,

The variations in someone's technique, their interpretation of measurements or times or colours can all add up to a different result. i.e. brown the onions can mean varying shades or brown to various people.

The one instance I can understand a recipe being kept a secret is if you are working as a chef at a restaurant with a menu that is totally your own. I wouldn't blame the chef for not sharing, as it's their livelyhood that depends on people coming back to their restaurant. But... it's nice when they do share recipes, but I never expect it :)

Its' funny this is today's poll, as I've recently started compiling all my favorite recipes into a binder. My hope is that I can make copies of it, and pass it on to my future kids (i started to type "daughter," but I'd hope my sons like to cook too ;D).

It's not that I won't share recipes, its often that I can't. I rarely measure, so writing down a recipe is difficult. I only measure for things like baked goods where the chemical balance is important. When I share my process for cooking something, I see people's eyes glaze over. They want an exact recipe, they don't want to pay attention to what is in front of them and improvise, which is how I approach food prep.

I was thrilled when both my mom and my grandma asked me for a tart recipe!

I even shared my 'famous' mayonnaise recipe ;-)

But once I refused to give a recipe. To a party I'd brought small almond pastries called 'Friands' from an old Paul Bocuse baking book. A girl asked for the recipe to give it to her mother to sell these pastries in their delicatessen shop!! No.

Absurd, too: you give a recipe to somebody, this person makes a mess out of it and then declares, oh, this is XYZ's recipe!

I share all of MY recipes and recipes of things I've found, tweaked whatever; however, there are a few of my grandmothers' recipes, recipes they would NOT share except to family, that I won't share either.

I'd even blog every single recipe if I had the time! If I were a chef, I'd probably think differently, but I'm not.

I'm honored when someone wants a recipe!

Old fashioned does not usually = bad, IMO. On the one hand I think it's absurd to hide recipes; it's not as though you invented the ingredients. I share recipes on my site all the time and love the responses I get. Plus many of my readers share their recipes. I do think it's quite rude to ask someone if they've just cooked for you.

i have a friend who will share his recipes, but you have to sign a non disclosure agreement! and hes a notary so its real!

it goes back to the fact his family once shared a recipe and someone made a lot of money off it, all they got was a free sample mailed to them!

I share recipes with anyone who asks for one, including special tips, techniques and caveats. I will admit it rather hacks me off when someone comes back and says that, for example, a cookie recipe didn't turn out right. 99% of the time I've said "butter" in the recipe and they've used margarine or shortening. That sort of thing irks me...

I'll even share things I don't have a written recipe for, just suggestions for sauces or marinades that are "to taste," if someone has enjoyed something I've cooked. (I rely on my "imaginary taste buds" a great deal... Try macerating strawberries with some fresh sage leaves some time. YUM!)

I can't imagine why anyone would consider it rude to be asked for a recipe. Sounds like a personal problem to me. If you truly don't want to share a recipe for some reason, then just say so. It is NEVER ok to give a recipe with a change. That's just plain wrong on so many levels. Think about that next time you're detemined to figure out a recipe which has failed repeatedly for you. You might rename it *Just Desserts*.

Funny story...my father-in-law had a secret family recipe for bbq sauce which he refused to share, even with immediate family .Or, I should say, he'd share the recipe minus the *secret* ingredient. This became a HUGE issue in the family. Some found it amusing, others not so much. For the record, dh was highly amused & it became a game to him & his dad. (remember that part...they both had fun with it)

Fast forward. Hubs & I married. My dad also had a secret family recipe for bbq sauce. Dh asked for it & Dad willingly gave it up. Dh came home so excited sharing his news. Um, yeah, I say, been making that since I was knee high to a grasshopper. It's a secret family recipe. Years later, when fil was at the end of his life after a long illness, he made a big production of sharing his 'secret ingredient' with his son, my dh. Hubs says nonchalantly, yeah, been making that for years now...*insert mischieveous grin here*

Turns out, both *secret family recipes* were nearly identical. Dh & his dad both found that hilariously funny. It's one of dh's fondest memories of his dad. And my dad got a chuckle out of it as well. As did I.

Like other people, most of the great recipes I have are more like blueprints. I write recipes on my blog but it takes ages to measure everything out properly, so I don't do that with the things I'm not writing about.

My mum's friend once asked for her [amazing] crumble recipe. Mum gave it out, then showed up to a big dinner a few weeks later and her friend had made mum's 'recipe' but altered it dramatically- adding a pie crust on the bottom and almost doubling the sugar and adding cinnamon (we're Brits; cinnamon doesn't go in every dessert), announcing that it was her recipe. She was mortified. It was quite funny :).

My future mother-in-law has a neighbor who would make tasty pastries and desserts, and she would ask the neighbor for the recipes. When her version of the desserts came out nothing like the neighbor's, we thought that perhaps the neighbor had altered the recipe on purpose. It wasn't until we realized that my mother-in-law just doesn't bother following the instructions (putting in half the amount of sugar required for a banana loaf and then complaining why it never came out looking the same as the neighbor's) herself that we realized it was probably HER fault, and not the neighbors....

I think Curtis B said everything I was going to say... I'm an experienced baker, but I don't have the skill to develop a recipe on my own. That said, once I've made a number of tweaks to a recipe so that it IS inherently mine, I will not be sharing it, especially since I do sell my sweets from time to time.

And yes, I keep a notebook with the family secret recipes I've been fortunate enough to have shared with me so that they won't get lost forever if I get hit by a bus or something. I even videotaped my aunt making hot water cornbread so that we could make sure to get it JUST right!

Now, the one time I did find it rude that someone asked me for the recipe was when I provided an order to a customer and someone asked for that recipe....uhh, no, you can't have the recipe- I SELL these. You can feel free to order some, but you won't be making these with MY recipe. It's like asking at the bakery for the recipe for an item off their menu....so that you can proceed to not purchase it from them. THAT is where the rude comes into play in my book.

Of course I will share a recipe. I'm quite sure it's very difficult to reproduce it perfectly. As someone mentioned before - people have different ideas on how a handful of basil is, they also have different ovens and pans.

I always share when asked, with the exception of one "top secret" family recipe.

But a story as well: We had my husband's coworker and his wife for dinner several times. One night she asked for a bread recipe (I spend MONTHS creating this recipe from almost scratch and I'm still quite proud of it). Of course I was flattered and said yes. The next week she baked up a few loaves and brought them to the office, she paraded them around and when people asked for the recipe she told them she created it herself and it was "top secret." I was so angry I wrote down the recipe and made enough copies for every person in my husband's small office and sent them in with him. I guess I really ruined her secret recipe! They were not asked to dinner at our house again.