[Wikipedia-l] Re: Recipes

Thu Jan 20 23:37:35 UTC 2005

There seems to be a difference in opinion about what a recipe is. Those who 
are against having recipes as part of the food articles appear to think 
that including a recipe is a(n attempt of) falsification of different 
points of view.

A well-written recipe is, in my opinion, a very valuable part of a food 
article. When that is said, it is of course essential from a lexicographic 
point of view that:

1) It is clear that the recipe is a description rather than proscription.
2) The provided recipe/s is/are reasonably representative for the tradition 
in question.
3) Common variations are listed in the recipe/s.
4) It is made clear what the general source for the provided recipe is.

Also, some recipes are very loosely defined, whilst others are by nature 
extremely fine-tuned. The provided examples (recipes)  will, if properly 
written, help make this clear.

>From: Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com>
>Of course we want to know what they are. And of course you can write about 
>it. But what I do not want is to be specified how much saffron I need, 
>just that it's there, and why.

Sometimes this is essential information, and other times it is not.

>Wikipedia should describe what the world is, what things are. Not be 
>prescriptive in what one should be doing. The article on food products 
>should specify what's in them and how they are made, but a recipe is not a 
>good way to do so. Just like the table article does not specify which 
>length the legs of a table should be,

I beg to differ: It is essential information to mention the difference in 
leg length of a diningroom table as opposed to a sofa table.

>the arancini article should not specify what filling should be in or how 
>long it should be fried.

Maybe not. But that depends on what arancini-like foods one needs to 
distinguish arancini from in a contrastive perspective. It also depends on 
what the actual cultural criteria are for how much variation there can be 
in the preparation before the result is no longer considered to be 
arancini. (Which is not to say that the resulting non-arancini need to be 
inferior in any way. They just happen to be something-else-than-arancini.)

>From: Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com>
>In 3 years now, I have NEVER seen an edit war on a recipe. I have seen 
>people adding that "though beef was usually used for the recipe, pork was 
>also used as well". And I never saw anyone complain with this.

Sounds about right... :)

>From: Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com>
>Stating exactly how the dish is done is overfeeding with too-specific 
>information. Should Wikipedia be deciding how long people boil their eggs?

Maybe. If describing boiled eggs, it may be essential to describe the 
process well enough that a person who doesn't already know how many minutes 
it is boiled *in a specific tradition* is able to find this information. It 
is also essential that any such cultural description be relativised through 
explicitly providing the information about *who* cook/s the eggs for the 
specified number of minutes. If people from one culture tend to boil eggs 
for two minutes and slurp them up from the shell with a bit of salt, there 
is nothing wrong in Wikipedia articles mentioning this as long as the 
description is properly qualified. It should then, of course, also be 
mentioned that other cultures slow-cook their eggs for close to 20 hours, 
peel the eggs before serving, and serve these eggs one-per-person as a 
brown-grean-and-yellow almost creamy hors d'oeuvre.

>But even without looking at that, the way they are presented, they are not 
>examples. They are descriptions, and often rather forcibly so ("you should 
>do this-and-that"). My objections would be much less _if they were indeed 
>given as examples_. On the Dutch Wikipedia I have recently proposed to 
>consider recepies "a kind of image", and add them in a separate block as 
>such, not part of the main description.

Not at all a bad idea! :-)

>Which to me is exactly the reason why we should not have them in 
>Wikipedia. If recepies were just "general directions", I would not be so 
>much against them. But they are not. They give one, specific recepy, and 
>take that as the be all and end all.

Not if they are well integrated and properly qualified. Just like a 
picture, a data table, or a graph representing specific data of relevance.

>But what defines "valid information". Is it "valid information" that an 
>egg should boil a certain amount of time? Unless we give ourselves an 
>amount of authority I'd say we should not even strive for, my answer is no.

That it "should" boil a certain amount of time? Probably not. That it *is 
typically* boiled a certain amount of time in a particular and explicitly 
specified cultural setting? Yes, in my opinion.

-Olve

___________________

Olve Utne
http://utne.nvg.org