Eater notes the spat has drawn some big names (Regina Schrambling, Steve Cuozzo, etc) into the discussion. One that I would raise is how does one NOT use a ghost writer, recipe tester, collaborating editor etc and deliver a quality book. I've used recipes from many books (the early Martha Stewart cookbooks come immediately to mind) where recipes weren't field tested for time, measurements, etc. Figuring out where the editor, etc end and the writer begins could be a subject in itself.
Or, as Paltrow put it, "No ghost writer on my cookbook, I wrote every word myself."
Moskin's response deals with definitions: she clarifies the difference between ghost writing and "ghost-cooking," or when someone is hired to invent recipes for a cookbook. It is the latter that, as she writes, "carried a strong stigma in the food world."
Today's NYT response:
...and we heard from a number of people named in the article, including Jamie Oliver, Rachael Ray, Gwyneth Paltrow and Mario Batali. All four have acknowledged, in print, working with collaborators on their books — but all objected to what they saw as the implication that they were not the authors of their own work.
While the article dealt with a wide range of assistance, it became clear that the notion of “ghostwriting” carried a strong stigma in the food world. It suggested that the food itself — the ingredients, the flavors, the techniques — was invented by someone else. This does sometimes happen (call it “ghost-cooking”), and the chefs who engage in it are the objects of a special kind of scorn.
Reply
The original article to which the authors objected has a picture of Ms Paltrow's cookbook and mentions her ghost writer, Julia Turshen. The other photograph is of April Bloomfield's book and her ghost writer, the estimable JJ Goode. Ms Ray's ghost writer is identified as Wes Martin.
“The team behind the face is invaluable,” said Wes Martin, a chef who has developed recipes for Ms. Ray and others. “How many times can one person invent a new quick pasta dish?”
Mr. Martin, and dozens of others like him, have a particular combination of cooking skills, ventriloquism and modesty that makes it possible not only to write in the voices of chefs, but to actually channel them as cooks.
“It’s like an out-of-body experience,” Mr. Martin said. “I know who I am as a chef, and I know who Rachael is, and those are two totally separate parts of my brain.”
Employing writers and recipe developers has long been routine; chefs, after all, have their own specialized skills, and writers are not expected to be wizards in the kitchen.
Ghostwriting is common among business leaders, sports figures and celebrities. But the domesticity and intimacy of cooking make readers want to believe that the food they make has been personally created and tested — or at least tasted — by the face on the cover. And that isn’t always the case, especially for restaurant chefs.
Food ghostwriters come in many different flavors, including the researchers who might spend days testing every possible method of cooking beans for Bobby Flay, the aproned assistants at the Food Network who frantically document everything that the “talent” does on camera in order to produce recipes for the Web site, and the (slightly) more literary work of writers who attempt to document a chef’s ideas, memories and vision in glossy cookbooks.
NY Times
