Irrefutable facts of culinary classification

[muckefuck]

Ever since reading Lakoff, I've been sensitivised to conceptual categories. It's always fun to realise that your brain has classified something in a way that's non-obvious to other speakers, but is so natural to you that you're not even aware of it until there's a miscommunication.

For instance, last night at dinner monshu talked about serving something "with the beans". I had to think about it for a moment, because I was sure he'd said that our starch was going to be potatoes (a.k.a. "the Great Satan"). Turned out he was referring to the green beans, which I never in hundred years would've classified as "beans". They're a green vegetable; they require no soaking or boiling in order to eat. Canned is not an acceptable substitute. I wouldn't put them in a soup or a stew. And so on and so forth.

Other revelations which employ the same type of interaction-based logic:

1. "Chickpeas" are not "peas". Neither are "pigeon peas". Only "green peas" are "peas" (to the point that "green peas" sounds pleonastic to me). And for those of you who call them "garbanzo beans", they aren't "beans" either.
2. "Hot dogs" are not "sausages". And this holds whether you call them "franks", "frankfurters", "red hots", or god-know-what. It doesn't matter that they are encased meats or that bratwursts and their ilk also show up regularly on buns.
3. "Cream cheese" is not "cheese". Neither is anything that looks and tastes similar, like Quark/Topfen or Neufchâtel. I'm not sure what to do with mascarpone, but ricotta is also "cheese" and "cottage cheese" isn't. (As far as I'm concerned, cottage cheese isn't even edible, but that's neither here nor there.)
4. "Soda water" is not "soda". "Soda" is artificially coloured and flavoured and sweetened.

I don't expect all of you to agree on these, and I don't think that difference is necessary dialectal; it wouldn't shock me if my own brother, raised with the same (godawful) food traditions differed with me on one or more of these. (After all, he's wrong about so many, many things.)

Comments

[grahamwest.livejournal.com]

What is the differentiating factor between hot dogs and sausages? And which side of that line would a saveloy fall?

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Never having had saveloy, I couldn't really say. Certainly not if it were battered.

I'm not sure how to define "hot dog" beyond "the meat product sold in plastic packs labeled 'hot dog' or 'frankfurter' in the USA". The internal consistency is softer and more finely minced than other types of sausages eaten hot. It generally lacks noticeable specks of fat, spice, or anything. But, of course, such a definition would exclude the offerings of Hot Doug's which I still recognise as "hot dogs" (and, in fact, the absolute pinnacle of hotdoggery) rather than "sausages".

For more of my British friends, a "hot dog" is simply a "sausage" on a bun. Does that definition work for you?

[richardthinks.livejournal.com]

In Brazilian Portuguese you can easily start unendable arguments by using the word "salsicha," which allegedly means sausage, but never the kind of sausage under discussion, which is properly a linguica. After about a decade I've more or less figured out that salsicha only reliably means hot dog.

...and Shaggy, from Scooby Doo.

[foodpoisoningsf.livejournal.com]

If you're going throw around unequivocal pronouncements like this, you'd best be ready with foonotes, Sugar.

[moominmolly.livejournal.com]

Also, lambic is not beer.

[grahamwest.livejournal.com]

That's why saveloys are tricky. They are sold battered and not, their skin is significantly thicker than other sausages (and a very bold orange-red) yet they have the internal consistency, fat and spicing like other sausages.

It doesn't really seem satisfactory to say that the presence or absence of a bun changes whether something is a sausage or not.

[darkphuque.livejournal.com]

Did we get up on the wrong side of the bed this morning?

Sake isn't wine.

Not all sausages have pieces/chunks of fat... think of Bockwurst.

How do you define "cheese"?I make "cottage cheese" and just because you don't like it, doesn't make it any less cheese.

Cream Cheese is nothing more than fresh high fat cheese with a million additives
That's also what mascarpone is...a soft high fat fresh cheese.

Sloe Gin isn't gin

Sparking wines produced out side of the Champagne region of France, isn't champagne

[kutsuwamushi.livejournal.com]

I don't think I disagree with any of these but "green beans," which are beans to me, in the same sense that sugar snap peas are peas: although the beans inside aren't very large, and aren't even the point of the vegetable, they're still there. Sometimes.

I'd never call sugar snap peas "peas" though, while I might call green beans "beans" if it was already clear that they were green beans and not, oh, black-eyed peas.

[danbearnyc.livejournal.com]

QUARK!!!

[snousle.livejournal.com]

Oral is not sex!

I got yer footnotes right here!

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

¹muckefuck, Personal communication, 12. June, 2009.
²muckefuck, Personal communication, 12. June, 2009.
³muckefuck, Personal communication, 12. June, 2009.
⁴muckefuck, Personal communication, 12. June, 2009.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Sorry, lambic is definitely beer. In fact, it was my gateway to beer. Root beer and ginger beer are not beer, though.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Cheese can be cooked: American between two slices of bread becomes grilled cheese, ricotta with meat sauce and pasta forms lasagne, bleu crumbles make a yummy sauce for steak. Baking is not cooking, so cheesecake and gooey butter don't count. What do you bake cottage cheese in besides the hideous fake lasagne we grew up on in the smalltown Midwest?

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

If you can't by them dry, they ain't beans. And sugar snap peas are definitely peas, as are peapods, but obviously not pea shoots.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

It doesn't; under such a definition, "hot dog" is just a particular preparation of sausage in the same way that "toad-in-the-hole" is.

[richardthinks.livejournal.com]

a hundred unpleasant diet-book recipes.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

See "not edible", above.

[caprinus.livejournal.com]

win!

Seeing as I'm Italian

[mad-troll.livejournal.com]

I have to disagree on two points:
a)ricotta is not cheese (since it's not made with milk but with whey*);
b)lasagne are not made with ricotta (unless you mean the hard,seasoned & very salty kind);

..not sure on cottage cheese, but there is no curd involved, isn't there?

*Yes, you often find the type made with milk cream (ricotta romana, or any southern kind). The milk cream, however, is just an addition.

[mollpeartree.livejournal.com]

Technically, paneer is a kind of cottage cheese.

Shocking, I know!

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Why do you fill my journal with these LIES instead of fulfilling your duty to us by blogging the IIFA Awards?

[anicca-anicca.livejournal.com]

That was interesting.

Just in case you're interested, and fwiw:
My concepts, and I would take it for granted that most of my Landsleute would agree (I have been taught differently on other topics, though, so who knows...)

Grüne Bohnen sind Bohnen. Kichererbsen sind Erbsen.
Hülsenfrüchte ist der Oberbegriff, der beide erfasst.
Es gibt ein Gemüse, bei dem ich mir nicht sicher wäre, ob Erbse oder Bohne, und zwar "Zuckerschoten" , so nennt man hier diese breiten günen jungen Bohnen, die man auch roh essen kann (was man bei regulären grünen Bohnen ja nicht tun sollte.)

Hot dogs sind Würstchen. Frankfurter etc auch. Chorizo ist Wurst.

Frischkäse (=Philadelphia) ist Käse. Quark ist Käse (Quark heißt Weißer Käse in vielen Regiolekten). Hüttenkäse ist Käse. Ricotta ist Käse.
Mascarpone, naja, ich weiß nicht. Könnte auch Sahne/undefiniertes Milchprodukt sein...
(Soda ist als Getränkebezeichnung nicht so gebräuchlich.)