Talk:Cooking/Archive 1

temperature changes
why are people changing the temprotures i put in is riht as i do work in the industry

I'd love to see this expanded to include descriptions of various techniques. I'm not a cook though.


 * Agreed, this page should be about cooking, not cuisine. Ethnic and regional cuisines should all be moved to cuisine, and this page should be about cooking techniques, ingredients, etc.

Sauteeing
Should sauteeing be under frying?

Red
Why is the text red now?

Ugly
Yikes! MANY ugly / pages in here -- Larry Sanger was right about subpages, having them obviously led to madness! No need to have Cooking/Stir frying; what the hell else is stir frying? I will see about moving these later. Anyone else is more than welcome to jump in. --maveric149
 * done. --maveric149, Wednesday, May 22, 2002

Move techniques to wikibooks?
OK, we're moving recipes over to wikibooks, so I'm wondering if the cooking techniques should go also? Obviously the content is needed there, so if a recipe says to sauté a chopped onion for 5 minutes, they'll know what to do, but should it be copied or moved and deleted from here? I prefer move and delete (also known as Transwiki). Gentgeen 17:39, 18 Feb 2004 (UTC)


 * I'd be happier if it was copied only. The topic consists mainly of food and techniques, so if techniques were deleted, after copying elsewhere, then most of the reason for the entry would be gone, it would transform into something like 'food'. So I say leave the techniques. EVen import som e information so that this page isn't just a list of links, as at present. It needs developing, not demolishing. Imho

TonyClarke 00:34, 19 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I find the absence in first paragraph of cooking being to do with appearance very striking. I would have said it was the art of improving the pleasure to be had from food by enhancing taste, texture, appearance and smell? --BozMo 21:30, 7 May 2004 (UTC)(talk)

Cooking for Starters
Hello, I am a thirteen year old who has experience for cooking. One night, I tried cooking dinner for my dad and i decided to fry an egg. And advise I have for people who fry eggs is that you should always close our kitchen door before you start. You shouldnt put took much oil or let the oil burn your hand Also, don't put the egg in so fast becuase the oil will start "flying out" of the pan.

~ A student from BLS, HR:227 Ms. Jacobson Peregino's science class (J.S.Y.) September 30, 2005

Cooking as a chef
I find it interesting and refreshing that so many are returning to the big room in thier homes. The kicthen is the heart of the house and family. It is a place where memeories are made, and refreshed. Simple as tomato soup on a cool day and that warm grilled cheese... or as fantastic as your first batch of scratch brownies that were fudgy and stuck to your mouth.

Keep cooking and don't mind the burns.... those are badges of honour.

VouS!!

MJS

New Cooking Wiki Project

 * I am interested in starting a cooking wiki on Wikicities. Anyone who is interested in being involved in this project can find more information on my Cooking Wiki subpage. -- Chris 10:06, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
 * UPDATE: I have decided not to pursue this due to the articles alreay located on Wikipedia, Wikibooks Cookbook, and the CookBookWiki descried below. -- Chris 09:43, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

Cookbookwiki
Hello, I am Robert, I have a cooking wiki already established that is in need of a few good contributors. I would be interested in giving Admin rights to a few good contributors. The wiki has mucho content but no real active community and just a handful of contributors. The project is located at Cookbookwiki.com and I can be contacted at wikimanager@yahoo.com, I recently removed google ads and such. I need help getting the community part of the wiki active. Feel free to stop by and add your comments to our home page discussion or get started. From my understanding, there is much content that can be added that is missing from wikipedia due to politics. So, if you would like a cooking wiki playground, please stop by or contact me. - Robert

The science behind cooking
I believe that this article should have sections about the science behind cooking. I.e. what actually happens to the mixture of ingredients when heated or cooled or mixed or whatever. There are a myriad of issues here. De-naturing of proteins, caramelising of sugars, decomposition of complex sugars to simple sugars, production of gases by thermal decomposition and by yeasts, effects of alkalies and acids etc. etc. Whilst it is possible to trawl through the chemistry pages and slowly start to glean answers, it would so useful to be able to pick up all the threads here even if the detail was elsewhere. I will try and make a start but any help would be appreciated. Velela 16:35, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Rename to "List of External Links to Recipe Sites"?
The external links section of the page is getting a bit ridiculous. A link or two to some recipe sites is fine, but if there's one or two, everybody with a recipe site will link theirs in too. It's WAY out of hand. I'm tempted to delete ALL the recipe-site links in that section, and leave a comment in the markup not to add any new ones. I feel sure that there's some Wikipedia policy or other about not having pages which are huge lists of links. Oh yeah, there is. Most of the links look like linkspam anyway: "An award-winning culinary source...", "Searchable database of over 100,000...". Uh huh. Comments? -- Wwagner 05:45, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Isn't that great? That great list of spammy links made nice and tidy and relevant. Thanks Graemel. I'll do what I can to help keep it that way. Velela 16:57, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

I would tend to agree with Wwagner. I, myself, have two recipe websites that I would like included Leftoverchef.com and TheRecipeNation.com, but I don't know that a wikipedia entry is the appropriate location. Perhaps a new article should be created for links to recipe sites where these items could be placed that would be a "sub-article" of Cooking? --Mkamensek 16:41, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, the list was attracting a lot of spam, Mkamensek implemented his change, but I convinced him that it was a bad idea, not least because WP:NOT a web directory. I was fairly ruthless in my call of the links, but anyone with more interest in the subject should feel free to trim more or add any genuinely authoritative links. --GraemeL (talk) 17:05, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

I have to admit- I have a lot of ideas, and many of them are bad. GraemeL (talk) tends to be right about a lot of them... --Mkamensek 17:07, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

I saw GraemeL and Mkamensek's dialogue on Mkamensek's talk page, and I think you two hit on probably the right way to go - removing the external links altogether. I've been percolating on this for the past however many days since I posted last, and policing any list like this is going to be all-judgement, all-the-time, and we all know that some people are going to get upset. Plus, some sites are marginal, i.e. they have interesting articles, but a huge bunch of recipes too. Right now, the ONLY link I'd save for sure is the Culinary History Timeline, because it's interesting, and focused on cooking, especially in a historical and cultural context, and not recipes. Marginal links are Cooking Guide for Home Cooks (needs renaming to The Reluctant Gourmet), Chef's Toque Culinaire, and maybe Culinary Chef; though they all have recipes, that isn't the whole focus of those sites. The rest, sorry to say it, are about to be flushed. Revert me if you must, but I think this needs to happen. &mdash; Wwagner 05:40, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
 * After another look, those two portals I left in the list are really iffy. I'll let somebody else make the call there. &mdash; Wwagner 05:49, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Moved External Links
I moved a couple of external links to the discussion page. The two pages seem to be "spammy" - One I'm having trouble with (Culinary Chef) - Please let me know if it should even be included here.

The second - Chefs Toque Culinaire - seems promising, but its Alexa ranking puts it around 4,800,000 (or probably less than 10 visitors per day).

(To put it in perspective, my two sites (listed above - theRecipenation.com and leftoverchef.com) are each ranked (1 month rankings) around 200,000 - which translates to about 1000 visitors per month)

That said, while I like Chefs Toque, I don't think it's quite prominent enough (yet) to be included on the main Cooking page.

-- Mkamensek (talk) -| The LeftOverChef 14:21, 3 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Sounds fine to me. I was having a big "maybe" attack when I nuked all the recipe sites from the External Links section the other week, and those two were pretty iffy.  You've got solid reasoning behind your removal, so I support your change 100%. &mdash; Wwagner 14:41, 3 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I appreciate that. I figure, if my sites - at 25k uniques per month - don't merit inclusion, then most others shouldn't either.  There are exceptions, of course, but it's a good heuristic for me. -- Mkamensek (talk) -| The LeftOverChef 15:13, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Food safety
The recent edit in favour of platic chopping boards when compared to wooden boards, was not borne out the European Union when, having first insisted on plastic boards in all commercial food preparation areas, then reversed its decision in favour of wood (especially Beech because experimentatl results showed much improved anti-bacterial effects when using wood. To date I have been unable to locate the appropriate refrences but I have marked the recent edit as requiring verification so that there can be consensus on this. Velela 13:01, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
 * I wasn't hugely in favor of that bit, whoever added it, as it seems a little too specific for an extremely general topic like "cooking". I don't think the Cooking article is really the best place for a discussion like that; might the Foodborne illness article (to which we're redirected from food safety) be a better place?  There are some brief bullet-points about basic food safety practices there, which could certainly be expanded.  Or perhaps this could be moved (also?) to the cutting board article, which already discusses these points in some detail?  That said, the results of the EU study you mention sound very interesting; definitely add them when you find them! &mdash; Wwagner 14:19, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
 * I added a source for the statement, based on an article at the University of Arizona (cited at reluctantgourmet.com). However, the Reluctant Gourmet article seems to flip-flop on whether wooden or plastic cutting boards are best.  Come to think of it, maybe the article should say that there is a debate between the relative safety of wooden versus plastic cutting boards, but that the most important part is to keep either one clean and sanitary.  --Elkman 03:01, 22 June 2006 (UTC)


 * May be worth investigation the work of Dean O. Cliver and Nese O. Ak at the University of Wisconsin which comes down strongly in favour of wood rather than plastic. I can locate many secondary sources for this work but no primary source. (cf. George Gallepp, Agricultural and Consumer Press Service, University of Wisconsin-Madison, as reported in Florida Veterinary Scene Newsletter, Vol. 3, No. 5, Sept. 1994, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL.) . See also Velela 08:48, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

Math (sic) of cooking
I have removed the following text as it appears un-encyclopaedic and mostly poses questions rather than answers. I don't believe that the title is appropriate in any case. However, there are some interesting concepts mentioned in passing which probbaly deserve some mention in a much more structured way.

== Math of cooking == ''Not everyone can cook, but to survive we all have to eat. To be able to create any cort of recipe correctly your ingrediants have to have some sort of relastionship with each other. You have to follow recipes to the T, if you in fact want the same desired effect. If you don't add enough flour to a dough based recipe, then it will end up hard as stone. If you use to much, there will be no consistency in the shape. Having relastionships is both important in cooking and math. In math it is called a Ratio. If a recipe calls for 2 eggs and 4 cups of flour, then the ratio is 2 to 4.''

Some examples of how math is used in the kitchen.

''Knowing the right proportions (math) of baking powder, baking soda, and acid to used in quick breads.  The chemistry of the browning action on meats (and other foods) is a function of the particular temperature at which browning takes place - temperature calculation is math. The length of time it takes to reach this temperature and how long it must be held is a math calculation.'' ''How much flour and how much oil to combine to make a roux, and how much flour roux will it take to thicken a given amount of liquid? You have no flour to thicken your gravy, how much cornstarch will it take to thicken the same amount of gravy?'' When making a Hollandaise sauce, why does it form an emulsion (math - how much oil will how many egg yolks hold in the emulsion), and why and how does lemon juice (an acid) effect the formation and stability of this emulsion, and what percentage of acid to use? A''n egg yolk will hold about 4 ounces of oil (butter) in an emulsion. How long can this stay together at a particular temperature? How long can it safely be held at differing temperatures before potential bacteria growth can become dangerous?''

Velela 09:03, 3 August 2006 (UTC)