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)

Thank you, Larry. The header on the top of pages 571 through 579 is Pasta, Noodles, and Dumplings, and within those pages he has voluminous comments of the history of each of them, variations with the field, the science of cooking them, etc. He begins with a lot about "pasta". Then he comes to a section called "Couscous, Dumplings, Spatzle, Gnocchi". I'm not going to copy out the whole thing, but what he basically is saying is the opposite of your own statement: that dumplings are simply a form of pasta, NOT THE CONTRARY. "Unlike pasta doughs, dumpling doughs are minimally kneaded to maximize tenderness, and benefit from the inclusion of tiny air pockets, which provide lightness." Hayford Peirce 17:26, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

I disagree, starting with the point that dumplings are necessarily light. Quite a few ethnic ones, such as my grandmother's matzo balls were dense, chewy, and probably could do serious damage if catapulted...if you didn't eat them first, and they were damn good. I can think of a fair number of dumpling types, from a number of cultures, that are maximally kneaded to maximize the texture.

This is not, however, a place I really want to go. My words are in the public domain, and do with them as you will. I'm just not going to get into the middle of a culinary argument, in which there are no universal definitions but a lot of different traditions and tastes. I'm not suicidal enough, for example, to say there is a definitive best way of making barbecue; I'm defiant enough to say that Texan is well down my list of preferences. Howard C. Berkowitz 17:58, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Howard, I detect an inconsistency between what you say in the article and what you say here on the talk page. On the talk page, you say that "dumpling" has many meanings, implicitly conceding that Hayford is correct that, on some usages of "dumpling," pastas are not dumplings. But the article you wrote seems to imply that all pastas are dumplings. Shouldn't you change the article so that it reflects your more broad-minded view, at least? --Larry Sanger 18:09, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

More definition (and retreat to the left margin)

Alan Davidson, in The Oxford Companion to Food, takes care of the "spaghetti == dumpling" problem by defining dumpling as "a small and usually globular mass of boiled or steamed dough [etc.]"

Davidson distinguishes -- quite vehemently -- between European dumplings on the one hand, and Asian preparations such as wontons, jiaozi, pel'meni, and momo, which he classifies alongside "filled pasta" such as ravioli and kreplach.

Although Davidson seems to go along reluctantly with using the word "dumpling" to describe such things as apple dumplings (which have stuff inside them) and Leberknödel (which have substantial non-dough ingredients mixed in with them), he appears to wish that a more purist definition would take hold, in which "dumpling" would be primarily a dough item used as an accompaniment to another dish, rather than as a stand-alone dish.

Still, if we're going to be descriptive rather than prescriptive, we have to report that English-speaking people typically translate words like "jiaozi" as "dumpling". And I don't think that's too far off the mark. Despite the fact that jiaozi are filled with large quantities of meat and/or vegetables, they are treated, in Chinese meal planning, as a starch. If you go into a restaurant in Beijing and order only a pound (!) of jiaozi, without any vegetable or meat items on the side, the waiter will ask you, quite reproachfully, "What? Aren't you going to order any dishes?" Bruce M.Tindall 18:10, 9 December 2008 (UTC)