We’re no strangers to plagiarism here at Dear Author. While out and out copying is easy to spot, strong similarities is a more murky area. The number 2 book on the USA Today bestseller list and the Number 1 hardcover on the Advice, How-To and Misc NYT list is Jessica Seinfeld’s “Deceptively Delicious“.
A number of readers at mommy forums, Amazon.com and Oprah.com have begun pointing out the similarities between “Deceptively Delicious” and “The Sneaky Chef“. Seinfeld says that the idea to puree vegetables and add them to recipes sprouted sui generis a couple of years ago
but in 2006, a chef and cookbook author of “The Sneaky Chef” submitted a 42 recipe proposal with the same ideas to Seinfeld’s eventual publisher HarperCollins. The New York Times found the following similarities:
parents purée healthy foods like spinach and sweet potatoes and hide them in childhood favorites like macaroni and cheese or brownies
spinach in brownies, avocado in chocolate pudding and sweet potato in grilled cheese sandwiches appear in both Lupina and Seinfeld’s cookbooks
an early publicity brochure for "Deceptively Delicious" showed an illustration with the same drawing …
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