Talk:Dumpling

Definition please

The article should start with a simple, pithy definition. Do all boiled pasta count as dumplings? That's not how I learned to use the word "dumpling." --Larry Sanger 14:50, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Pithy? "I luff you, my sveet little dumpling?"

Yes, at least to a cook, all boiled pasta meet the culinary definition of dumpling. I recognize that, say, spaghetti might not seem a dumpling, but it really does meet the characteristics of one dumpling type: relatively bland absorber of the cooking liquid or sauce Howard C. Berkowitz 14:57, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Hey, did we ever decide on a workgroup for food and recipes? As I understand, food science is gone. I'd do subpages if I knew the group to use. As it is, I'll probably do a free-standing related articles subpage.

Who wrote the above? Please sign all your comments!

Well, you learn something new every day, I guess. Outside of Asian food restaurants, nobody I knew ever seemed to use "dumpling" to mean anything other than chicken and dumplings and apple dumplings. --Larry Sanger 16:25, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Howard, you are simply wrong about this. If you're going to make such a preposterous statement, please give some sources for it. I myself have before me the absolutely magisterial On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen by the acknowledged master in the field, Harold McGee, and although he puts pasta, noodles, and dumplings into the same general chapter, he clearly distinguishes between them. To call pasta dumplings in the main article is like defining human being as a "torus", ie, a doughnut-shape surface with a hole through it, like a coffee cup with a handle. (I saw this example in Scientific American once, I think.) It's possible to do so, but it flies in the face of common sense and common usage. If you argue about this issue, sigh, I will have to go downstairs and start going through my 100 or so other books about food and cooking to refute you. Plus do dictionary searches. Hayford Peirce 16:38, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Cooking is sufficiently art as well as science that there can be multiple interpretations, and I'm not aware of any single acknowledged master. Indeed, I can pull out the CIA book (Culinary Institute of America), although I also know someone who is a CIA graduate who is also a retired field officer of the other CIA, and uses knives in both disciplines.

If you look at what we know of the historical development of pasta, noodles, and dumplings, they all have a common origin of some sort of starchy binder, usually boiled. Almost certainly, the first versions were not especially shaped, as, for example, fufu. Spaetzle and gnocchi are only slightly shaped. The extruded and rolled forms presumably came much later, although there is an amazing Chinese technique where thin strands come from a block, simply from folding and pulling. Filled dumplings logically are a later development since the other techniques to create the wrapper for the filling.

What does McGee call the general chapter?

There is, anyway, a distinct similarity between humans and coffee cups. Both are only temporary containers of coffee. One never owns coffee, but only leases it.Howard C. Berkowitz 16:46, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Aha! So I wasn't just entirely ignorant! Anyway, Howard, in your as usual voluminous reply, you don't actually answer Hayford's objection. What is your source that the term in fact usually means what you say it means? Not your argument that the term should mean what you say it does. Your source for the generally accepted or expert usage. --Larry Sanger 17:04, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Should? Well, 50 years or so of cooking experience and classes, and a variety of opinions among cookbooks. I claim there is no universal definition. I can go dig up some sources, but this is just not important enough to me to get into a major research effort. That would be voluminous, so, thinking about it, I have no intention of getting into the hassle over what I consider an essentially hobby article.

If that's called for, either delete the article, or just let me know that someone else will take it over,so I'll drop out and go cook some dumplings. Howard C. Berkowitz 17:23, 9 December 2008 (UTC)