Talk:Bengali cuisine/Archive 1

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I dont think we should break it up into two sections instead we can stress upon the variety, why dont we write more on the diversity. I have seen plenty of variation even in the district levels.

Also I think one defining property of bengali cuisine is the use of shorser tel. I think we must broaden this part. Also the various leaves-vegetables we use are also very rare. lau, kumro, palong, note, pui, kalmi, susni, sajna, ninche, patal, uchhe, sapui, kachu .. and many more. I think this is a very precious local color in our quisine and we must record them.

best of luck Jeroje 00:16, 16 July 2007 (UTC)jeroje

Breakup into seperate sections for West Bengal and Bangladesh?
It seems to me that there are enough differences in food habits and dishes that Bangladeshi food and West Bengal food deserve seperate sections. People on either side of the border do similar things in different ways, and this is not that easy to represent in the same text without a lot of explanations and exceptions.

What do people think?

--Shanky 14:41, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

Further information
This was moved from the main page; the author was not a registered user For any clarifications you can mail me at [mailto:chayan_banerji@hotmail.com chayan_banerji@hotmail.com]. I shall be glad to reciprocate to queries in the periphery of my understanding. I work as a food production lecturer at a college affiliated to Osmania University.

Spelling of rosogolla
There is this unnecessary fuss about the English spelling of a Bangla word:


 * In some areas rasogolla is also spelled as "rasagolla" (in Sanskrit, rasa means syrup and golla means ball), though the spelling and the sound "rasogolla" is more popular in Bangladesh and the modern Indian Languages.

I am removing it because I fail to see why this discussion is at all necessary. Most of the information, except for the "shondhi bichchhed", is incorrect anyway.

-- Urnonav 13:40, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

POV?
Bengali "Hindu" and "Muslim" food? Come on, the difference is due to region, not religion. I propose to remove religious references and rewrite the article to refer to regional cuisine differences. I have never seen any difference between Hindu and Muslim family food in Bangladesh. Also, the thing about Muslims coming into Bengals with the Mughals is false, Islam in Bangladesh arrived much earlier. Remember Bakhtiar Khalji? Anyway, religious references are irrelevant and POV here. Thanks. --Ragib 07:42, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * You may be right about Bangladesh. In West Bengal, as well, daily food is not different between communities. However, food on special occasions is, and I intend the article to reflect that.
 * The reference to the Mughals is incorrect. However the diffusion of Islam in Bengal was somewhat unique, and the food does reflect that, and so should the article.Hornplease 08:05, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)


 * Forgot to mention, I have no objections to all the other changes you made, I think they improve the article, and reinforce NPOV.Hornplease 08:10, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Bangladeshi cuisine, and spelling
I feel this article is heavily skewed towards Bengali cuisine of Indian Bengal, and often fails to mention facets of Bangladeshi cuisine and the terminology associated with it. Unfortunately, I myself am not qualified to write much on the topic, as my area of expertise is on the language and not the food, but I would suggest that anyone who knows more about Bangladeshi food please feel free to add onto what's been written.

Also, I updated the spelling of the Bengali words to reflect the system agreed upon by some of the main contributors to the Bengali language and Bengali script pages. It's sort of silly to romanize a Bengali word as if it were Sanskrit or Hindi, so this system roughly reflects what is considered Standard Bengali pronunciation. Please let me know if there are any questions or comments about this.

--SameerKhan 06:34, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Article needs major cleanup...
This article is full of spelling mistakes and weird sentence structure. I think I've fixed about 95% of the typoes in it (the ones that caught my eye, anyway) but it needs much, much more editing to make it an encyclopedia-worthy article. There is some slight POV scattered everywhere (i.e. an extremely interesting article(!) - removed now btw) and all Bengali terms are not in italics - making them hard to understand from an Western viewpoint. Not friendly for someone who isn't immediately familiar with Bengali cuisine at all. :(

So, I request all Bengali wikipedians to cleanup this article in any way possible. It'd be nice to work together making it at least a good article. Sheehan (Talk) 04:34, 10 April 2006 (UTC)


 * I definitely agree. I'm now focused on Bangladesh and Bangladesh Liberation War, but definitely, once I'm done there, I'd look into this one. --Ragib 05:13, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

Post by anonymous user
Hi. An anonymous user posted this message in the body of the main article. I am moving it here. --Antorjal 18:53, 5 September 2006 (UTC) " Is the variant of muri "khoa" or "khoi"? Pls. check"

Picture
No picture at all. Can anyone provide some pictures of Bengali cuisine.--NAHID 19:19, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Article coverage
Right now, the article mainly talks about the cuisines of West Bengal rather than the greater region of Bengal, including the nation Bangladesh. Continuing the thread I started at User talk:Sankarson, I propose the following :


 * This article should focus on common culinary traits of Bengalis.
 * Specific regional details should go to either "Cuisine of West Bengal" or "Cuisine of Bangladesh".
 * All info must be referenced.

About the information, the "Influence of Hindu Widows" section is not referenced at all, nor is the statement "From the culinary point of view, some major historical trends influenced Bengali food. ". The article's focus on "Rise of Kolkata" is also not very correct -- Kolkata was only prominent from the 19th century, while other cities such as Dhaka are much older. So,


 * The entire "History" section needs reference for everything stated.
 * The generalization about onions and garlic are not correct; these may be correct in Hindu dietary restrictions, but not for all Bengalis in general. In fact, most cookbook recipes start off with frying of diced onions.
 * The "Culinary influences" section is repeating many things from the History section.
 * The Bengali meals section is unreferenced - "In rural areas, Bengalis traditionally eat on the ground with a large banana or plantain leaf serving as the plate or plates made from sal leaves sown together and dried." this is so not true. This might have been true 100-200 years ago, but even the dirt poor people have been using at least earthen plates for quite some time.

So, this article needs a massive rework. I suggest starting fresh, may be in a subpage, and then migrate the work into the main article. All information must be referenced, especially anything about historic influences. And of course, *this * article needs to be about generic Bengali food, not just the food of any particular region. --Ragib (talk) 04:12, 12 October 2008 (UTC)