Sharing recipes....

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Dh & I went over to a friends for a holiday meal & the hostess and her sister both made this sweet potatoe casserole that was just devine. Everyone ohhhed & ahhhed it. There was a bit of talk about the topping (brown sugar, flour & a mix of pecans & walnuts). The sister put nuts in the topping of hers but the hostess didn't (personally the sisters one was more appealing).
So dh asked me to get the recipe & I asked the hostess. She kind of put me off by saying that I should ask her sister (wow, we were at HER home). I don't know her sister (& frankly the lady kind of intimidated me) besides the fact that I'm certain she didn't carry the recipe around in her back pocket.
So, is there some unwritten rule or something that I broke? The whole thing was just kind of WEIRD & I'm wondering if anyone else has ever been through anything like this?

p.s. I was able to get the recipe on-line after a little bit of searching.

I'm having a bit of a hard time following who is whom in your story, so my response is based on this assumption:

You asked your hostess for the recipe of her sister's potato dish instead of her (the hostess's) own.

If that's the case, it sounds like the hostess is being snitty that people didn't like her dish and preferred her sister's. She's probably embarrassed that hers didn't come out as well or was just an inferior recipe.

I would probably not have asked for the recipe at all (though you did the correct thing, etiquette-wise, by asking the hostess since it's her table) because I would have anticipated the discomfort that would have arisen from two such-similar dishes having been served. If the sister had made something completely different than the hostess, the hostess would probably have been fine with procuring the recipe for you.

Or, maybe your hostess is just a noob at entertaining and doesn't realize that it's her responsibility to get the recipe for you. She could be sitting there puzzled, wondering why you didn't just directly approach the maker of the dish.

It used to be one never complimented the food, one complimented the hostess on having (and managing) such a fine chef. How times change!

It seems that it is a family recipe from the hostess/her sister (from their Mother). They both made it (but the hostess left the nuts off) but they said it was the exact same dish.

Could it be a guarded family secret (I can't imagine that, sweet potato casserole is pretty basic) or something? I can't understand. Maybe they made their dishes together and the sister knows the proportions and the hostess doesn't? Regardless, it's hard to tell what happened without having heard the tone of the hostess.

yeah, sweet potato casserole is a really basic dish; this particular one was spactacular (my husbands description) literally EVERYONE who tasted it was over the moon raving about it.

I actually cooked the recipe I found tonight....it was good but I realized that there is NO way that there was a combo of walnuts/pecans (the 2 nuts bake differently) on the one we had before (different texture....) husband really liked it & with just that one tweak, I think I have a keeper for the recipe.