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The day was Wednesday, Feb. 18. The place was a Radio-Canada studio in Montreal. The topic was recipe writing. The tension was palpable.

The players were chef Danny St-Pierre and restaurateur and cookbook author Caroline Dumas. The recipe in question was for that old-school Québécois classic, pouding chômeur. The argument went something like this: “Danny, I have a small score to settle with you. You cut and pasted my recipe onto your website word for word.”

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It was the definition of awkward, especially as the morning show, Médium Large, is taped live. Social media sites erupted with auditors taking sides. Had St-Pierre ripped off Dumas’s recipe? Could Dumas claim ownership of a classic Québécois dessert? The hashtag #poudingchomeurgate was born.

There are two factors here up for debate: recipe plagiarism and crediting an original idea. St-Pierre’s restaurant site featured a page with a recipe that without a doubt is Dumas’s. Though a few of the measures had been changed, the ingredient list and the methodology were identical. It’s true that most every Québécois family probably has their own version of this dessert. Yet Dumas’s is not the same ol’ pudding cake created by Camilien Houde’s wife, Georgette Falardeau, during the Depression, or even the version popularized by Quebec culinary icon Jehane Benoît years later. The classic recipe consists of a basic white cake baked with a brown sugar sauce, resulting in a cake with a pudding-like texture. Dumas’s recipe replaces that brown-sugar sauce for one made of equal parts heavy cream and maple syrup. Though some classic versions call for the addition of maple syrup, the cream/maple syrup idea is 100-per-cent Dumas’s, resulting in a cake that’s not just filling and sweet, but delicious enough to be served at Martin Picard’s restaurant Au Pied de Cochon since its opening in 2002.