How should I think about the usage of 「御負けに」in:
- 秘伝の味のレシピを教えてくれて、御負けに見学までさせてくれました。
It seems like it doesn’t really fit the tone of the sentence.
RE: 御負けに
It sounds okay to me since not only did this person teach them the secret recipe, but they also (as a bonus) went out of their way to show them how to make it. Or, referencing the Fun Fact section, it says
An important distinction between phrases like それに and お負けに is that お負けに keeps its original meaning of (B) being some kind of ‘bonus’. What this means is that whatever the speaker is trying to convey, (A) by itself is enough to meet some specific qualifications, and (B) is just adding ‘insult to injury’, or ‘icing on the cake’, depending on whether it is a good or a bad thing.
In this case, it’s a bonus that the person got to see how it was made, since they could have just given them the secret recipe and gone on their way and the person may try to make the recipe by themselves and not know how to do it, but because they’ve seen how it was made they can feel more confident.
Was there something in particular about the tone that is throwing you off?
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perhaps you are taking the ‘to make matters worse’ of 御負けに too literally. It also means * what’s more
- in addition
- on top of that (from the jmdict definition).