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Celebrity chef dismayed over recipe used by Australia's mushroom killer / Photo: © SUPREME COURT OF VICTORIA/AFP
Celebrity chef dismayed over recipe used by Australia's mushroom killer
One of Australia's most famous chefs said she was dismayed to learn killer cook Erin Patterson partially used her recipe when baking a poisonous beef Wellington that killed three people.
Patterson was found guilty this week of murdering her husband's parents and elderly aunt in 2023 by lacing their Saturday lunch with lethal death cap mushrooms.
She based the dish -- poisonous fungi aside -- on a recipe by celebrity Australian chef Nagi Maehashi, the author of best-selling cookbooks.
Maehashi said her recipe for the perfect beef Wellington had become "entangled in a tragic situation".
"It is of course upsetting to learn that one of my recipes -- possibly the one I've spent more hours perfecting than any other -- something I created to bring joy and happiness, is entangled in a tragic situation," she said late Tuesday on social media.
Throughout a trial lasting more than two months, Patterson maintained the beef-and-pastry dish was accidentally poisoned with death cap mushrooms, the world's most-lethal fungus.
But a 12-person jury on Monday found the 50-year-old guilty of triple murder, a crime that carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.
She was also found guilty of attempting to murder a fourth guest who survived.
D.Cieslak--GL
