Talk:Floating island (dessert)

the island is not made from hard cooked meringue as is indicated in the article.
isle flotante is made from either quick poached egg white or raw egg white. not from hard meringue.

can be seen clearly on these pictures. http://www.ideesdeparents.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/ile-flottante.jpg http://artiweb.info/eatandco/components/com_virtuemart/shop_image/product/_le_flottante_49c6bc4a654e7.jpg http://www.easyfrenchcook.fr/img/img_r/i1236163521.jpg http://perlbal.hi-pi.com/blog-images/178637/gd/1221510251/Iles-flottantes-au-caramel.jpg

sources http://www.odelices.com/recette/Ile-flottante-classique-au-caramel-r54 http://cuisine.journaldesfemmes.com/recette/306443-iles-flottantes etc etc etc 83.101.83.247 (talk) 14:41, 22 September 2011 (UTC) - edited to reflect. 83.101.83.247 (talk) 20:31, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Category
why is this categorized as Category:Antebellum cuisine? It's a French dish which happened to be served in the US before the Civil war. That's also true of, say, French fries (also served by Jefferson) and cold boiled ham (also listed in The American System of Cookery) and macaroons, etc. etc. It seems like a problematic category in general. --Macrakis (talk) 01:40, 17 September 2020 (UTC)
 * The category is fine, there are enough reliable sources for this. Spudlace (talk) 02:01, 17 September 2020 (UTC)
 * What exactly are you saying is a source for its being antebellum cuisine? Just because Jefferson and an 1847 cookbook mention it doesn't make it specifically "antebellum". It's also mentioned in cookbooks in the US in the 1930s. A quick search finds, , . Should we now put them in a category Category:1930s American food? It doesn't seem useful (not to mention that again, these are primary sources). --Macrakis (talk) 03:23, 17 September 2020 (UTC)
 * This is another one you can find in published encyclopedias like The Early Republic and Antebellum America: An Encyclopedia of Social, Political, Cultural, and Economic History from Taylor & Francis. Spudlace (talk) 03:40, 17 September 2020 (UTC)
 * There is no mention of antebellum cuisine in the body of the article, and those encyclopedias are not referenced in the article.
 * In any case, an encyclopedia mentioning that floating island was a popular dish in Antebellum America doesn't tell us much. Floating island was also a popular dish in other times and places. The article on Cuisine of Antebellum America also documents the popularity of bacon, beer, okra, etc. and it would obviously be ridiculous to categorize those as "Antebellum cuisine", because they're also Pre-Revolutionary cuisine, Postbellum cuisine, 1920s cuisine, 2000s cuisine, etc. --Macrakis (talk) 17:00, 17 September 2020 (UTC)
 * "Floating island was also a popular dish in other times and places." - please don't do this again, categories are not removed because the article can be added to other categories. This dessert is primarily and strongly associated with early American cuisine in reliable sources like The Cambridge World History of Food, The Routledge History of Food and the encyclopedia I cited above. Spudlace (talk) 18:30, 17 September 2020 (UTC)


 * Re "categories are not removed because the article can be added to other categories". Actually, they are. The general rule documented in WP:SUBCAT is that categories should not be redundant. If floating island is found in American cuisine both before and after the Antebellum period, then it should be categorized as Category:American cuisine, not Category:Antebellum cuisine.
 * As for your sources, I still don't see them in the article, so we shouldn't be relying on them. Please add them to the article with full page references so that they are verifiable.
 * Re "This dessert is primarily and strongly associated with early American cuisine". I assume by "early American" (which usually means pre-Revolutionary), you actually mean "Antebellum" (defined as 1776-1861 in Cuisine of Antebellum America). Anyway, you still haven't given any evidence for this rather surprising claim ("primarily"!) about a French dessert.
 * What exactly are you basing this on?
 * In The Early Republic and Antebellum America: An Encyclopedia of Social, Political, Cultural, and Economic History, which you cite, there is one mention of floating island in the whole book, simply saying that it was a "popular dessert", as was ice cream. (p. 363) From "popular" to "primarily and strongly associated" is a huge leap of WP:SYNTH. Surely we shouldn't be categorizing ice cream as Category:Antebellum cuisine based on this?
 * In the Cambridge World History, which you cite, floating island was part of "one dinner on record" (one!) which included "ham, turkey, chicken, duck, corned beef, fish, sweet potatoes, 'Irish' potatoes, cabbage, rice, beets, 8 pies, syllabub, jelly, 'floating islands', and preserves." (p. 1312) It mentions all these foods as an example of the "excesses" of southern antebellum cooking, but it doesn't characterize any of them as specifically antebellum. Again, it is WP:SYNTH to conclude from this that floating island is specifically an antebellum food. After all, we wouldn't categorize corned beef and rice as Category:Antebellum cuisine based on this. --Macrakis (talk) 19:33, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

I feel like you are stalking my edits and that has to stop. There are other unsourced categories on this page like Moldovan cuisine that you haven't removed or objected to. I want you to stop stalking my edits. You refuse to accept three very good sources from Cambridge, Routledge and Taylor and Francis. You say your concern here is verifiability, but these sources should have been enough to satisfy you if that was the case. There is nothing wrong with these sources. I think you may have a viewpoint about the value or scope of the historical foods category that should be discussed at the category page. The historical foods category has existed since 2006 and I wonder why it's only become a problem now. Spudlace (talk) 20:54, 17 September 2020 (UTC)


 * First of all, this discussion is about the category Category:Antebellum cuisine, not about Category:Historical foods. I have as a matter of fact opened a discussion on that talk page anyway. I agree that other categories for this article (Hungarian, Romanian, Moldovan, Austrian, Fourth of July foods) are also questionable, but one thing at a time. I will certainly support you if you remove them in the meantime, since after all the article gives no evidence at all for those category.
 * When I saw the strange category Category:Antebellum cuisine an article on my watchlist, I looked at the other articles listed there. Other than Cuisine of Antebellum America, they seemed incorrect. Following up on that is not any sort of stalking. If you still think that my behavior is inappropriate, I invite you to open a complaint.
 * The reason that I "refuse to accept three very good sources" is (as I've said before) that the sources simply don't say that Floating island is "primarily and strongly associated with early American cuisine". What's more, they're not even included in the article, as I've already said.
 * Is it time for a third opinion? We don't seem to be moving forward in this discussion. --Macrakis (talk) 21:23, 17 September 2020 (UTC)


 * Antebellum cuisine makes no sense to me whatever. The fact that other countries or times have had an interest in something so delicious is hardly surprising. Antebellum cuisine is not a defining characteristic of this article. WP:CAT O3000 (talk) 21:34, 17 September 2020 (UTC)
 * What are you talking about? What other countries? Have you ever had this dessert or even seen one? There's no source for a French origin, by the way. Escoffier published the recipe, but he also published recipes for desserts with Carolina Rice, which I suspect is about as French as our dessert. I can go through Viandier later, but that would really be WP:OR. There's no secondary source for a French origin.
 * There seems to be a consensus forming at that talk page (thanks for linking me by the way). Fricassee can be moved to Creole cuisine based on that consensus, though I'm not happy about it (or baked beans), but Floating Island is well within the scope of that consensus. Spudlace (talk) 21:51, 17 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Have you ever had this dessert or even seen one? I don’t see the relevance, but yes, I’ve made it a few times. Fricassee I can see in Creole, which is based on French. But, that’s WP:OTHERCONTENT. O3000 (talk) 21:56, 17 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Macrakis, did I already say the discussion should have been kept in one place? I wouldn't want to repeat myself. Spudlace (talk) 22:03, 17 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I was talking about Floating island (dessert) on this Talk page. I don't know why you brought up fricassee here, a completely different dish. --Macrakis (talk) 01:30, 18 September 2020 (UTC)