Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2023 June 23

= June 23 =

French and Chinese, the world's only real cuisines
I've read in various places that "some say" French and Chinese cuisines are the only two "real" cuisines in the world, which would imply that any other cuisines are just imitations or derivatives of these two. Does anyone know who could have been the first to propose this idea? — Kpalion(talk) 09:02, 23 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Please cite your sources for this claim. Saying that you "read it in various places" is not helpful. --Viennese Waltz 09:13, 23 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Robert Strybel, Maria Strybel, Polish Heritage Cookery, Hippocrene Books, New York, 2005, p. 11: "Some say that the only truly distinctive cuisines are those of China and France." This is where I first saw this claim. I'm sure saw it in other sources later, but I don't remember where. — Kpalion(talk) 09:37, 23 June 2023 (UTC)
 * There is a 1922 source that has, "A mandarin entertaining one of our diplomats said: 'I drink the health of France and China, the two greatest nations of the world, the only nations that have invented a cuisine and a code of courtesy.'" --Lambiam 13:19, 23 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Doing keyword searches, I can find books that share a sentiment of the three great cuisines: French, Chinese and Turkish. Only one I found is in our collection. It is "Talking With My Mouth Full" by Bonny Wolf. She explains the criteria. They had to create their own cuisines and they had to have access to ingredients, primarily spices, that they used. That eliminates areas with unique cuisines that were not dependent on trade, such as Scandinavian cuisine or Native American cuisine. She further explains that Chinese cook the food with limited sauce. French cood the meat, vegetables, and sauce separately. Turks cook all the food and sauces together. Then, everything else we find is an extension of those three cuisines. I know this isn't exactly what you were asking because it includes three cuisines, but I find far more references to three than two. 97.82.165.112 (talk) 18:44, 23 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Other sources including a third cuisine opt for, for example, Mexican or Moroccan. --Lambiam 10:37, 24 June 2023 (UTC)


 * That Wolf thing is "let's invent a definition that gives me the result I want" isn't it? And "they had to have access to ingredients [...] that they used"? As opposed to cooking with ingredients that they didn't have access to and didn't use? Why does anyone take nonsense like that seriously? DuncanHill (talk) 13:35, 24 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Strikes me as absurd as well. I'm inclined to say that French cuisine is just an over-specialized and effete version of Italian, but that would ... probably be unhelpful at this juncture, as well as too specific to a particular Parisian variant.  I am curious exactly what distinguishes Turkish cuisine from, say, Greek or Lebanese. --Trovatore (talk) 19:35, 24 June 2023 (UTC)
 * What many people think of as Turkish cuisine, with its emphasis on meat dishes, stems from the cuisine of the Ottoman Palace and does not represent the regional variety. If we equate Turkish cuisine with the cuisine of the Ottoman Empire, the Greek and Lebanese cuisines are regional cuisines, each with their own characteristics, just like (for example) Sichuan cuisine and Cantonese cuisine have their own distinctive characteristics. Present-day Turkish cuisine has appropriated many dishes that originated outside the current territory of Turkey, but many typical Greek or Lebanese dishes will not be found on the menus of Turkish restaurants (and vice versa). --Lambiam 21:29, 24 June 2023 (UTC)
 * The claim about French, Chinese and Turkish cuisines came up in my Google search as well. I suspect, however, that it's a Turkish extension of an earlier claim of there being only two great cuisines, French and Chinese. And just to be clear, what I'm interested in is the origin of that claim and not whether it's true. — Kpalion(talk) 23:34, 25 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Strikes me as coming from someone with a strange inferiority complex over food. But I find most "cuisine" to be overly complicated and a strange mixture of over and under cooked. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 14:03, 26 June 2023 (UTC)
 * And no mention of British cuisine delicacies, such as kidney pie, and bangers-and-mash. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 15:54, 26 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Absolutely. On a cold dank winter's day theere's nothing like a hotpot or shepherd's pie or cottage pie or faggots & peas.  Gives you a nice solid meal to fill hungry stomachs, not like two lettuice leaves and an artistically arranged sauce. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 16:06, 26 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Plenty of people who would turn their noses up at at a traditional English dish of lambs' kidneys ("Eww. Offal, I'm not eating that!" would pay far over the odds for rognons d'agneau ("It's very Elizabeth David darling, there's a lovely little bistro near our summer place in Provence does it beautifully. Of course, only 'we locals' go there... Do you know the Cholmondley-ffortescues? They've got a simply delightful little maison near us...") DuncanHill (talk) 16:20, 26 June 2023 (UTC)
 * The English and the French have hated each other since time immemorial. But a couple of centuries ago the English latched on to French cuisine and never let go. The French, however, don't look like reciprocating any time soon. There's probably a good reason for that. --  Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  18:36, 26 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Hence the Monty Python bit about a man with a tape recorder up his nose. Meanwhile, someone (probably a Brit) told me this proverb: "If your guests are French, serve Italian. If they're Italian, serve French. If they're British, boil anything." ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 19:02, 26 June 2023 (UTC)
 * "the English latched on to French cuisine and never let go" – a certain section of the chattering classes may have, but the vast majority of ordinary Englishmen didn't. Go into any basic cafe and it will be the old stand-bys, possibly plus a curry or similar. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 20:33, 26 June 2023 (UTC)
 * True, but I guess I wasn't exactly thinking of "basic cafe" fare. They don't seem to sit comfortably with notions of "cuisine". --  Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  20:58, 26 June 2023 (UTC)
 * One wonders what the inhabitants of the Americas, or Australasia, or sub-Saharan Africa ate for the many centuries before they came into contact with French or Chinese cuisine? Chuntuk (talk) 10:25, 27 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Food. And in parts of the Americas they had chocolate, but they weren't snobs about it. - Jmabel &#124; Talk 01:34, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

Metatron?
I was looking at Commons Category:Metatron for something nice to add to the WP-article Metatron (apart from Alan Rickman), and someone at some point tagged this Workshop of Rembrandt depiction of the Binding of Isaac with Metatron. However, I have not found any WP:RS to back that up. Anyone? Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 09:43, 23 June 2023 (UTC)


 * While Eleanor Follansbee's 1927 book Heavenly History: An Account of Heavenly Architecture after Dante, Milton, Swedenborg and Blake identifies the intervening angel as Tadhiel, there are apparently sources that credit Metatron or Zadkiel. Unless we can identify some other source than the narrative of Genesis 22 (which just refers to the intervener as the Angel of the Lord, also in the Dutch translation of the Bible that Rembrandt possessed) as having served as Rembrandt's source of inspiration, there is no basis for any specific identification. --Lambiam 12:35, 23 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Sounds about right. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 19:08, 24 June 2023 (UTC)
 * I found this in Gustav Davidson's A Dictionary of Angels:
 * "Among numerous other missions or deeds credited to Metatron is the staying of Abraham’s hand on the point of sacrificing Isaac. But this 11th-hour intercession has also been imputed to Michael, Zadkiel, Tadhiel, and of course to the 'angel of the Lord', who is the one designated in Genesis 22."
 * But even if this is correct I don't think we can say that Rembrandt painted Metatron. I guess you could go as far as saying that the painting depicts an angel stopping Abraham from killing Isaac and that some sources say that that angel was Metatron. -- Random person no 362478479 (talk) 07:24, 25 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks! Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 08:37, 25 June 2023 (UTC)