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.