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If that was the case, then cooking recipes would be all copyrighted, and you would have to pay a licensing fee every time you made spaghetti. The complexity of copyright is even referenced in the Wikipedia supreme court ruling I linked too. Yet you ask for an honest discussion? What was not forthright in my reply?

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A mere listing of ingredients or contents, or a simple set of directions, is uncopyrightable.

https://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ33.pdf

> ... aa recipe that creatively explains or depicts how or why to perform a particular activity may be copyrightable. A registration for a recipe may cover the written description or explanation of a process that appears in the work, as well as any photographs or illustrations that are owned by the applicant. However, the registration will not cover the list of ingredients that appear in each recipe, the underlying process for making the dish, or the resulting dish itself.

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