Talk:American cuisine/Archive 2

Archive 1

Archive 2

Definition of American South

The definition of the South included under the subsection for Southern food conforms to neither the Census Bureau's definition nor the (much narrower) commonly accepted definition (at least among Southerners).

Delaware is Southern as per the Census Bureau, but mostly revolves around Philadelphia, culturally speaking, and is not really considered to be Southern by most Southerners -- especially with regards to its decidedly Pennsylvanian food (excellent gas station fried chicken notwithstanding). The subsection in question does not include Delaware as part of its definition of the South, and I'd suggest leaving it that way, despite the Census Bureau's classification.

Washington DC is considered Southern by the Census Bureau and this article, but not most Southerners. However, its cuisine is very heavily influenced by the South, mostly due to the city's large African-American population. I think that, since this article pertains to food, it is appropriate to maintain the current classification.

Where things get iffy is Texas. Although the state is considered Southern by the Census Bureau, I think most people (and certainly most Texans) would agree that the state is both large and unique enough that it constitutes its own geographical niche. The article says that Houston is the largest city in the South, which while true under the official definition, is neither commonly accepted nor relevant to the subject of this article. The article also makes a delineation between East and West Texas with regards to the state's southerness, which I think is valid. I suggest maintaining the delineation between East and West Texas but deleting the reference to Houston.

Maryland is considered Southern by the Census Bureau, but not by most people. The article makes a distinction between northern and southern Maryland, with the latter being more Southern as per the article. I suggest doing away with the subdivision of Maryland and considering the entire state part of Mid-Atlantic. While far-southern Maryland remains culturally linked to the tidewaters, the population centers of Montgomery and Prince George's Counties feel much more Northern, which is reflected in the food from those places.

Maxbillick (talk) 06:03, 24 January 2021 (UTC)maxbillick

Too long

This article is simply too long. On my screen, it takes 25 pages, of which the "Regional cuisine" section alone takes 11 pages. At least the "Regional cuisine" section should be further subdivided into region-specific articles. JIP | Talk 14:55, 27 January 2021 (UTC)

Agreed, it is far too long.

It is badly organized. Why does the 6th paragraph of the "Nineteenth-century American farmhouse" section discuss the urban diet?

It is absurdly detailed. See the comments about the temperature range in New England; or the proportion of milkfat in crab bisques; or the list of New England apple varieties (longer than the list in the Cuisine of New England article and unsourced).

Much of it is written in a timeless way, as though 18th century farmers ate the same things as 20th century urbanites.

There are run-on sentences that try to say much too much:

All of these [fish] are prepared numerous ways, such as frying cod for fish fingers, grilling bluefish over hot coals for summertime, smoking salmon or serving a whole poached one chilled for feasts with a dill sauce, or, on cold winter nights, serving haddock baked in casserole dish with a creamy sauce and crumbled breadcrumbs as a top so it forms a crust.

Or which make ridiculous claims:

Maine and Massachusetts, in more recent years, have taken to harvesting peekytoe crab and Jonah crab and making crab bisques, based on cream with 35% milkfat, and crabcakes out of them: often these were overlooked as bycatch of lobster pots by fishermen of the region, but in the past 30 years their popularity has firmly established them as a staple.

Crab has certainly become more popular, but in no sense is it a "staple".

There are sentences that make no sense:

The Native American cuisine became part of the cookery style that the early colonists brought with them.

etc. etc.

It really needs to be cut way way down, with the purple prose and questionable claims removed.

Who will bell the cat? --Macrakis (talk) 22:40, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

Overall, I'd say this is one of the most poorly written articles I've seen on Wikipedia. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 141.214.17.120 (talk) 18:46, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:

• PatsCheesesteak.jpg

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 04:26, 13 August 2021 (UTC)

Problematic illustration

The use of an American flag as a tablecloth is problematic, notwithstanding the image is furnished by USDA. ☆ Bri (talk) 15:54, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

License says public domain. Looks OK from a Wikipedia policy perspective. Also the flag makes the photo a bit artistic. I assume your concern is that it is disrespectful to the flag? –Novem Linguae (talk) 03:35, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

Vandalized Preview Pop Ups for This Page and a Large Number of Related Articles

It appears that the pop-up preview for this article along with a number of other articles, mostly pertaining to food and/or pertaining to the United States of America or Canada possibly also Korea and Italy seem to have been vandalized with one specific image of what appears to be a fly on feces. I have no idea how those are edited and I have had no luck searching for how to do so. These are the instances I have found from looking at previews of pages that link to the pages for American cuisine and Canadian cuisine look at the first two pages of 500 instances for the American cuisine article and the first 500 instances for the Canadian cuisine article and they show that this problem has a surprisingly-large scale.

A list of the pages I have found thus far that have been vandalized in this manner:

Neapolitan cuisine, Lunch, Music of the United States, List of cuisines, Roman cuisine, Cinema of the United States, Cajun cuisine, Soul food, Technological and industrial history of the United States, Canadian cuisine, Chuckwagon, Cuisine of the Pennsylvania Dutch, Cuisine of the Southwestern United States, List of reptiles of Canada, Cinema of Canada, Cuisine of New England, Greek Canadians, Oath of Citizenship (Canada), Cuisine of Philadelphia, New American cuisine, Cuisine of North Dakota, Culture of Dallas, Lists of populated places in the United States, List of foods of the Southern United States, Cuisine of New Jersey, Tlingit cuisine, Cuisine of Omaha, List of Korean Dishes, Culinary Revolution, Cuisine of the Thirteen Colonies, Indian ice cream (Canada), Barbecue in the United States, Cuisine of the Western United States, South Korean cuisine, List of soul foods and dishes, Venetian cuisine, Barbecue in Texas, and Timeline of United States inventions (1946-1991)

I would have worked on fixing this vandalism myself, but I have no idea how to edit an article's preview pop-up and can't find any resources for learning how to do so. Also, the apparent scale of the problem is systemic and, as such, I feel that I must call attention to the problem so that people with more technical know-how than me can try resolve the problem. YIMBYzus (talk) 07:10, 31 March 2023 (UTC)

Moved to Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents § Vandalized Preview Pop Ups for American cuisine and a Large Number of Related Articles

––FormalDude (talk) 07:28, 31 March 2023 (UTC)

Some strange ethnic biases in this article

In at least a couple of places one encounters some rather old cliches regarding two of the earliest ethnic groups in the US (I'm sure there are others, but I don't have the background to identify them).

• The first pertains to the "Dutch" in the MidAtlantic region. While it might seem obvious to modern readers to associate "Dutch" with "the Netherlands" and the "New Netherland" colony with the country that gave its name to it, only about half of the settlers came from the Netherlands, and a majority of the colonists were not Holland Dutch.[1]. Of the ~50% non-Dutch element, the largest group (nearly 40%) came from states and regions now part of Germany -some from territories adjacent to the Netherlands, and a significant minority from southwest Germany (the Palatine "Dutch"). While it was common at one time to assume Pennsylvania Dutch =German and New Netherlander ="Dutch" (in the modern usage), historians now know better: the term "Dutch" was used in the 17th and 18th Century (particularly in America) to refer to all Germanic peoples (Germans, Hollanders, Scandinavians etc) and languages (German, Danish, Swedish etc), and the colony of New Netherland was far more diverse than earlier historians assumed. The New Netherland Institute claims Scandinavians, Scots, Irish, Sephardic Jews (from Portugal), Italians and Croats also had a presence in New Netherland, and all lived under Dutch rule and contributed to the culture of the colony.[2].

• There's a similar bias in play when the Irish are referenced, in both the MidAtlantic (MA) section and Southeast (SE). In the MA section, all traces of Irish settlement pre-19th Century were reduced to "some Irish from Ulster" (assume "Scots-Irish"), when in fact the Irish made up ~11% of Maryland's population and 8% of Delaware (refer to the table on p. 98 for scholarly estimates[3]). For comparison, Ulster/Scots-Irish were ~10% of Maryland's population (smaller than the Irish) while the Irish outnumbered the Welsh in virtually every state/colony and the US as a whole by 1790 (settlers from Wales were referenced as part of the "very diverse mosaic of peoples"). In the SE section it's very much the same story: the "English and Scottish" are listed as the "original settlers", yet the Irish outnumbered the "Scottish" (not Scots-Irish) in almost every Southern colony/state and in Tennessee they were about even (again, p. 98 link 2 has figures). In fact, every single region of the British Isles but Ireland is referenced in the Southern section, except for of course Ulster. Small but visible minorities of Germans, French, Scandinavians and some Dutch were also present in the colonial South.

There are other issues here but this is already very long and so I'll await some responses. Overall the prose in this section is not very encyclopedic and seems like it was written by a small child for a school assignment. Jonathan f1 (talk) 23:51, 17 February 2024 (UTC)

I'm more of a monitor than an editor on this article, but that said, if you believe you have reliable, secondary sources with which to make changes to the article, please feel free. Stefen Tower_{s among the rest!} ^{Gab • Gruntwerk} 20:53, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

Jonathan f1, I just realized you are blocked from article editing. Due to other priorities, it would take me too long to get up to speed on this topic area. But if you can give me some specific "change x to y" statements, with citations I could use, I would certainly do what I can. Stefen Tower_{s among the rest!} ^{Gab • Gruntwerk} 21:13, 4 March 2024 (UTC)