Talk:List of foods named after people

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[edit] Tournado Rossini

Would it not make sense to explain this specific dish? Tournado Rossini is a filet mignon served on a crouton and topped with pate de foie gras.

Crouchend524 (talk) 22:42, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Beef Wellington

Is beef really named after Beef Wellington? I thought the etymology was from the french word "beuf". -- 195.33.105.17 13:59, 16 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing this out. Yesterday's edit screwed this up. Dominus 14:09, 16 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Eh? Beef is from boeuf, the wellington does indeed come from the Duke of Wellington, according to several sites. [1] [2] [3]

Also 'lager' comes from a German word, meaning, I think 'to store or lay down'.

DJ Clayworth 19:29, 19 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Jay's edit bothed the formatting and link of the Beef Wellington entry. It was named for Wellington, but after the edit, the page claimed that Beef was named forBeef Wellington, rather than Beef Wellington being named for Wellington.
Sorry about that. I didn't look into the contents. I was only interested in formatting the page to be consistent with other lists of eponyms (see Lists of etymologies) Jay 07:06, 20 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Lager is from German Lagerbier == "Stone beer".
Dominus 20:40, 19 Feb 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Noah Ketchup

http://www.takeourword.com/TOW119/page2.html says that the Noah Ketchup inventing ketchup story is ridiculous. Jay 19:14, 19 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Why, then, did you add it to the list? Dominus 20:40, 19 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Sorry about that. I added first and googled later. Jay 07:06, 20 Feb 2004 (UTC)

A lot of the derivations listed here seem to come from this page. However I'm not sure how reliable it is (the Lager and Ketchup stories especially read like good stories, rather than well-researched pieces of history). DJ Clayworth 19:35, 19 Feb 2004 (UTC)

And also [4]. They looked like well-written articles and didn't appear as fabrication. I didn't do a google-test on them, but was planning to make a mention of the etymolgy in each of the food's talk pages. I think we can maintain the incorrect list on this talk page, so that no contributor makes the mistake of adding it to the main article. Its good however that this page is well policed ! Please have an eye on the other eponymical lists I've initiated. (Lists of etymologies) Jay 07:06, 20 Feb 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Spurious Etymologies

List of incorrect/spurious etymologies. Please avoid adding these to the article.

Curry Sir George Curry
Ketchup Noah Ketchup
Lager beer Gottfried Lager
Avocado Jorge-Luis Avocado
Marmalade Joao Marmalado
Buffet Pierre-Alphonse Buffet

[edit] Baby Ruth

The "Ruth Cleveland" etymology for Baby Ruth candy bars is the official one, but it's suspect. When the candy bar was introduced, Babe Ruth was tremendously popular, and Grover Cleaveland hadn't been president for twenty years. It's easy to imagine that the candy bar was named to suggest Babe Ruth, and that the "Ruth Cleveland" story was dreamed up by the manufacturer to avoid having to pay Ruth for the use of his name. -- Dominus 15:14, 2 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Check out Snopes on this. older≠wiser 15:25, 2 Jul 2004 (UTC)


[edit] New Entries

Is there anyone out there who might want to discuss this page with me? I have been adding to it and amending some entries, and I could use some feedback and advice.

Mothperson 18 March 2005

Thanks a lot for your contributions. Why did you remove the Linzer torte? -- Dominus 21:06, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)


Ack - a human being. I can find no reference to a Josef Linzer being connected to the torte. When a source is mentioned, it is usually the town of Linz, and the torte is supposed to be very old. I wondered if that Josef was confused with Josef Dobos, creator of the Dobostorte, which I haven't added yet. I'm adding information to what were simple entries. Is this okay? I sent an e-mail to Jay last weekend, but he has not answered yet. I am sort of food-history obsessed. I should say that the only Josef Linzer that shows up in Google is the one on lists that are copies of each other, right down to the incorrect spellings. The information gets almost incestuous. I'm looking in my book collection for information, and also do googling in French and Italian, which is how I verified the Alfredo and Tatin stories.

Mothperson 18 March 2005

Mothperson, I've replied on your talk-page, though I don't know much about Josef Linzer to comment. Jay 04:57, 17 May 2005 (UTC)
I'm sure I read somehere that the linzer torte was invented by someone named Linzer in Budapest, because I remember being surprised that it was not named after the city of Linz. I did find at least one web page apparently unrelated to Wikipedia that supports this: [[5]]
I will see what else I can turn up. Thanks for your careful attention. -- Dominus 02:21, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)
The OED supports the Linz etymology. I will continue to investigate. -- Dominus 02:24, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Rose Levy Beranbaum also cites Linz. -- Dominus 02:51, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)


I didn't keep track because I went to so many sites, but most of them (I think I saw at least 5 or 6) cited Linz when the discussion went beyond a simple list. Josef Dobos was from Budapest. Thanks for your investigation. I will go look at that hemisphere site.

Question for you - where do you think the line is between an eponym and a brand name, if there is one? I'm thinking that if the product is popularly referred to by the name alone, such as Russell Stover (box of), Jim Beam (bourbon), Sara Lee and Little Debbies (baked goods), that qualifies as an eponym. But then I get confused because I don't consider Birdseye an eponym (which Clarence would probably find insulting), yet I think Hershey bar might be. And what does one do with Paul Newman and Jimmy Dean? Despite all the research required, the 19th- century stuff is simpler.

I'm not going to add anything of this nature until I hear from you. Meanwhile, I've got plenty of other entries to do - Veal Oscar, Celery Victor, Sarah Bernhardt cakes, madeleines.......

I had no idea there were so many. And all very interesting.

Mothperson 20 March 2005

Also, is there a Wikipedia standard spelling for tzar/tzarina - czar,tsar, etc., and capitalized?

Brand names are a tricky one. This list is really one of several lists split off from the article on eponyms. In general brand names don't fit my impression of what an eponym is, on the other hand when a brand name becomes so universal that it represents the object (such as Hoover) it probably should count. If in doubt, they could always be included in a separate sub-section of this page which would make the destinction clear. -- Solipsist 16:28, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Yes, this is kind of my feeling about brand names, but my opinion of what is universal may not be - uh - universal. Perhaps I could list the names I'm considering, eponyms vs. brand names and someone else could judge more impartially than I can.

Mothperson 19:24, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

My sense is that when the food itself is named for a person, it belongs here, but when it's just a name for a specific brand, it doesn't. -- Dominus 14:16, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I agree with you. My problem is with things like Little Debbies (named after the granddaughter of the manufacturer), Sara Lee (ditto, but daughter), et al. They are sort of contemporary versions of Bath Olivers. Or Jim Beam, who in 1894 renamed his great-great-grandfather Jake's product (then called Jake Beam) after himself. So I'm still confused.

Mothperson 14:51, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)


But Sara lee isn't a particular kind of cake. It's not as though a "Sara Lee Cake" is a spice cake with chopped pine nuts and juniper conserve on top. "Sara Lee Cake" is absolutely any kind of cake that is manufactured by the Sara Lee company with a Sara Lee label on it. Compare, however, "Sachertorte". A Sachertorte is not just any cake made at the Hotel Sacher, but only a very specific kind of cake, and this cake is still a Sachertorte whether or not it was made at the Hotel Sacher. Anyone can make a Sachertorte.

So "Sara Lee" isn't a cake named after Sara Lee; it's a company named after Sara Lee. "Sachertorte", however, is a cake named after Franz Sacher.

Similarly, "Jim Beam whiskey" isn't a particular kind of whiskey. It's just bourbon that happens to have been distilled by Jim Beam. Hershey bars are any chocolate bars made by the Hershey company, and only chocolate bars made by Hershey are Hershey bars. But beef Stroganoff and tarte Tatin are so-named regardless of who made them. The food itself is named after Stroganoff or Tatin, not the brand. Even if Stéphine Tatin came back from the dead and made a chocolate tart with brandy in it, it wouldn't be a tarte Tatin, because that's not what tarte Tatin is; tarte Tatin is an upside-down fruit tart.

I can think of more problematic examples, but the ones you list above aren't among them. -- Dominus 21:11, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)


You're right. I'm not sure I want to know what the more problematic examples are, but maybe you should tell me. What about Samuel Adams beer? It's no longer a single type of beer, but several. I was going to add it, but now I think maybe I shouldn't.

64.30.60.157 21:44, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I wouldn't add Sam Adams beer. It's not a kind of beer; it's just beer that's sold under the name of Sam Adams. Any other kind of beer in a Sam Adams bottle would become Sam Adams beer too. And if you were going to list Sam Adams, you would also wantto add Busch beer and Coors beer and so forth. But they're not names of beers; they're names of brands, which is not the same thing.

The problematic examples I was thinking of were things like Pimm's #1 liqueur, where the name and the specific drink are closely associated. Pimms makes other liqueurs, but they're not well-known, and it's not completely clear whether someone else could make a very similar drink and call it a Pimms. Probably they would run into tradmark problems, but that's not what I mean. Imagine someone who brew beet in his closet, upts it in bottles, and then serves it to his friends, saying "here, have a bottle of homemade Sam Adams." Silly, right? Because it's not Sam Adams beer. Nobody would say "Oh, you'v been brwing up Sam adams in your closet." But someone who makes flavored sloe gin in his closet and serves it to his friends saying that it's homemade Pimms is perhaps not being so silly, and one of the guests might sya "hey, you've made Pimms!" without even being prompted.

Or consider Tootsie Rolls. Is that the name of the food itself? Or it is a name for a particular brand of chocolate-flavored candy? Can I make Tootsie Rolls at home? If I do, will people recognize tham as Tootsie Rolls, even though they aren't in the Tootsie Roll wrapper?

The Baby Ruth candy bars are also a bit of a puzzle, and Dom Perignon wine. I'm not sure what distinguishes these cases from the ones I feel sure about. -- Dominus 02:50, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)


I think I understand what you're saying, but the Pimms throws me. I think that's the same as the other examples. I don't think you can make homemade Pimms anymore than you can make homemade Coca Cola. I put Tootsie Rolls in because Baby Ruth was already on the list, so I assumed this type of entry was acceptable. Now I think maybe it isn't. And you're probably right about Dom Perignon, too. And what about Bath Olivers, again? Too bad - the stories are interesting. Maybe a list of manufactured foods named after real people? No to Betty Crocker and yes to Duncan Hines on that one.

Well, it's not like taking a few entries off this list is going to matter. I have so many others to research, my head is swimming.

Say the word, and I'll remove whatever you think appropriate. Or rather, inappropriate.

Mothperson 18:17, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)


Yeah, you're probably right that the Pimms is a bad example.

I think there's a continuum, with Sara Lee cakes at one end, then Jim Beam whiskey a little farther down, then Pimms liqueur, then Baby Ruth bars, then Tootsie Rolls, and Sachertorte somewhere close to the other end. I'm really not sure where I would want to draw the line. And I might be wrong about the Tootsie Rolls anyway.

One argument in favor of keeping the Baby Ruth bars is that that really is the name of one specific confection; a Baby Ruth bar has a specific composition. But on the other hand, if the Curtiss company decided to make a lime-chutney-granola bar and market it in a Baby Ruth wrapper, would it be a Baby Ruth bar? I guess so. So I can see it going either way.

I do think Duncan Hines is not the name of a cake; it's the name of a brand. I don't know enough about Bath Olivers to have an informed opinion.

-- Dominus 20:30, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Bad example - I meant that if there were a list of manufactured foods named after people, Duncan Hines was real, and Betty Crocker wasn't. But I am in total confusion now. I thought your idea about "can you make it at home?" as a test was very good. But then I realized you can't "make" fruits and vegetables at home. And while you can make a version of peanut butter cups at home, they will *never* be Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. Ditto Bath Olivers, Tootsie Rolls, Dom Perignon, etc. etc. Their identity comes from their manufactured nature. So back to the question - just what is a food named after a person? With the make-it-at-home test, we're talking solely about dishes - things that have recipes that can be duplicated. But the other things are still foods named after people. So do we need three categories? Dishes, plant foods, and manufactured foods? Or do you rename this list?

Starting to crack like an egg.

Mothperson 15:20, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Of course you can make fruits and vegetables at home. I can buy seeds for Hubbard squashes. If I plant a granny smith apple tree, the apples that come off of it are granny smith apples; "granny smith" is the name of the apples. But there is no way for me to harvest Ocean Spray cranberries at home. I can grow all the cranberries I want, but they will not be Ocean Spray cranberries, because Oceean Spray is not the name of a cranberry; it is the name of a brand of cranberries. -- Dominus 15:42, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)


I don't see it that way. Seth L. and Bing made the Bing cherry, but you can't, nor can you sit down at home and whip up a Hubbard squash. You can only buy a marketed product - a tree, a packet of seeds, and hope for the best. A Baby Ruth is a food you can only buy, not make. The Ocean Spray example makes no sense to me, because if, hypothetically, Ocean Spray used only the "Benjamin Franklin cranberry" (fictitious), by your definition you could make that. And it's safe to say Curtiss is going to name that lime-chutney-granola bar the Madhur Jaffrey or something, because Baby Ruth, while a brand name, is a very specific food. I can see tossing out lines of food (Sara Lee, Samuel Adams, Little Debbies etc.) because they cover more than one food. If we use this as the distinction, then the Bath Olivers and Dom Perignon and Baby Ruths should stay. And Oh Henrys and Mary Janes then need to be added. Besides, they're a nice change from all those infernal concoctions of dead animals, artichoke hearts, and truffles in Madeira sauce.

Mothperson 16:35, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Alphabetization

I don't know if this is where I should put it. Someone got annoyed with me somewhere else for doing it wrong. However, over on the history page, someone suggested listing lords' names alphabetically, which I can see makes sense. I'm getting to another problem which is similar - many many dishes of sole, veal, chicken etc. which I think should be listed by the person's name - so Oscar, Veal instead of Veal Oscar, or d'Albufera, Chicken à la instead of Chicken à la d'Albufera. Any thoughts, anyone??

Mothperson 18:35, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I think that would be jarring. I would suggest either:

1. List Veal Oscar as "Veal Oscar", but put it under the letter O instead of the letter V, or 2. Break up the entire list into sections, have a section for veal dishes, and list it under O in that section.

Also, don't worry too much if someone gets annoyed with you. If they don't like it, they are free change it to be how they want.

-- Dominus 20:30, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I'd like to do #2, but too many people have multiple dishes named after them - meat, fish, eggs, pastry, garnishes (19th-century chefs were insane, in my opinion). So I don't know. The semantics involved in the other problem are threatening to crash my brain. See below.

Mothperson 15:20, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)


I'm about to start alphabetizing this page as it's getting too messy to read, and I've got at least 40 more entries I'm researching now. And more to come.

Mothperson 00:01, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)


[edit] reformat and/or spinoff list

This page is looking increasingly more clutted, would it be best to reorganise it into a table layout (e.g. as below), and have only a very breif description/note about the item on this page, moving detail to individual articles. Possibly a second list sorted by person would be useful as well, as several people have several thinsg named for them (c.f. List of British rail accidents (chronological) and List of British rail accidents by death toll). This would then reduce clutter further by removing the need for the comments as in Fillet of Beef Prince Albert used in the example below.

Item Person Notes
Fillet of Beef Prince Albert Prince Albert, consort of Queen Victoria also has an English white sauce, the Prince Albert Pea, and Prince Albert apple, and probably Albert Pudding named for him
Chicken à la d'Albufera Louis-Gabriel Suchet, Duc d'Albufera Famed 19th-century French chef Antonin Câreme created several dishes in the duke's honor, including duck, beef, and the sauce that accompanies this chicken.

If people want to go with either of these suggestions I'll set up a working page and make a start. Thryduulf 09:32, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

Thryduulf 09:32, 6 May 2005 (UTC)


I strongly Object to this suggestion. I can write my objections up in detail, but first I'd like to know why you want to turn it into a table and a bunch of orphaned stubbs (adding to the already humongous list of abandoned food and drink stubs). Your aesthetic opinion of it looking "clutted" is not enough reason. Perhaps we could just revert to the unclutted January version. --Mothperson 11:15, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

  • A table to me seems like the best way of organising the three key bits of information tidily, but if you think a different layout would be better suggest it.
  • Any stubs created would not be orphans as they would be linked from this page and put into apropriate categories, I was more thinking of having a brief amount of info here and merging the rest to existing articles (e.g. Beef Wellington might be apropriately merged onto the Beef article).
  • The principal difference between the January version of the page [6] and the current revision is the amount of information associated with each entry, compare
    • Jnuary: Baby Ruth candy bars – Ruth Cleveland, daughter of Pres. Grover Cleveland, or Babe Ruth
    • May: Baby Ruth candy bar – most likely, Babe Ruth (1895-1948) was the inspiration for the name. Although the Curtiss Candy Co. has insisted from the beginning that the candy bar was named after a daughter of Grover Cleveland, Ruth Cleveland died in 1904 at the age of 12, while the Baby Ruth was introduced in 1921 right at a time when George Herman Ruth, Jr. had become a baseball superstar. It is interesting to note that very early versions of the wrapper offered a baseball glove for 79 cents. Babe Ruth's announced intent to sue the company is probably what drove and perpetuated the dubious cover story.
  • What my proposal is intended to do is return to the uncluttered nature without losing the extra information.
  • Do you have any comments on my other proposal about a list sorted by person? Thryduulf 11:50, 6 May 2005 (UTC)


The principal difference between the January version of the page and the current revision is 22 entries vs. somewhere in the 180's now, with at least another 60-80 awaiting research/verification. And several of those original entries were incorrect. Wikipedia lists can be good, great, or godawful. See List of cookbooks or List of egg dishes. As for stubs, when I term them orphaned, I mean that an appalling number have been started with a feeble sentence or two, and left in hopes someone will adopt them and make them real. They are virtually useless as encyclopedic information, and embarrassing when they show up on mirror sites as "everything you ever wanted to know about," labeled as Wikipedia productions. In many cases, they seem to serve primarily as a way to turn red subjects into blue.

This list is no longer a typical Wiki list. I don't think that is detrimental in any way. It is as much about the connections between history and food as it is about eponyms. In the hundreds of hours I've spent on this article, I've learned a lot about those connections, and tried to convey some of that without going completely over the top, i.e. "be bold", not wild and crazy. I've left out far more information than I've added. What you are proposing to do is castration, to my mind. There are thousands of things broken around Wikipedia, but I don't think this is one of them.

By the way, the use of "offer" in the Baby Ruth entry is grammatically correct and stylistically intentional.

--Mothperson 13:20, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

The number of entries isn't the main difference - you can have lists with lots of entries that are uncluttered and lists with a few entries that are. You and I agree that this has grown beyond a normal list, but to me that suggests that the current format of the list is no longer apropriate and a different format would suit it better - bulleted lists are best suited to small, discrete entries, or short lists with more information.

I repeat that I am not proposing creating stubs with "a feeble sentence or two" and I don't want to loose any of the information so decaptiation is the wrong metaphor. I feel there are three types of enties on this list:

  1. There are possibly a few entries on the list with enough information to make a good short article (not a stub), particularly as you say that there is more information you left out than you added. In these cases, I am proposing that this list has a single sentence summary of the multi-paragraph article with a link (c.f. the Railway accident lists).
  2. The second type is the one where there is only the amount of information that would lead to a stub or sub-stub. I would again summarise this information into a single sentence for the purposes of this list, and move the rest of the information to either an article about a coherent group of products/foods (e.g. perhaps Beef dishes or eponymous chocolate bars) or to a new section on a more general article (e.g. perhaps Beef or Victoria of the United Kingdom (possibly even articles about the food and about the person in some cases)). Again these would be linked from this list.
  3. Where there is only a very small amount of info, or where there just isn't anywhere suitable to merge it to, then leave the information on this list, where it wont be crowded out by the entries with vastly more information.

The articles in 1 and 2 could also be added into a Category:Eponymous foods to further group them together.

The point of this is to return this article to what its original purpose was - to be a list of foods that are named after people. One of the main functions of a list on WP is to be a jumping off point to other articles, which this list has an excellent potential to become. The links between food and history that you describe should become an article in itself, illustrated with examples from this list and its spinoff articls. I would certainly be interested in reading it. Thryduulf 15:30, 6 May 2005 (UTC)


This list lay around for 18 months as a nice, uncluttered, typically Wiki-lame "list". If I've tainted its original purpose, well - my bad. Because of my obsessive-compulsive tendencies, I do not want to write articles. I've seen far too many incompetently written articles here (I'm not saying there aren't many good and great ones, but the volume of crap is mind-boggling). I don't have the patience to do the amount of research I would feel necessary for an article. Short entries, I can manage, but even those take me an inordinate amount of time to research. I've turned two stubs into articles, and I did not enjoy the process. It's difficult enough for me to suppress my usual "voice" to write these entries. I would not be able to do it in an article about food and history.

If you are determined to see an uncluttered "List of foods named after people", I propose I change the title of this to another article name, and you can strip the foods and people from it and return the list to its original purpose. Personally, I think the time would be better spent elsewhere, with the sick and dying, like those two lists I mentioned above. Mothperson 16:18, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

Just as a quick note - Eggs Benedict has six lines on this list; Bearnaise sauce one and a half. Both have articles which are about equally long, and quite satisfactory non-stubs. I guess one solution would be simply to try and pare down the longer entries on the list here, simply saying "thought to be either named for X Benedict or Y Benedict", and having the detailed etymological story on the page dedicated to the food. The entry for Delmonico steak, certainly, looks like it could be well placed in an article about the restaurant or the food.
On the actual point, with regards to articles, hmm. The best way to write an article on, say, Eponymous foods would be to write a brief introduction noting what an eponym is and how popular they have become, then mention a couple of particularly famous examples - Earl Grey tea, pavlova - and a couple of famous-but-obscure ones - say, praline or sandwich, which people often don't know are eponyms.
Then go into, basically, what you have here - a long discursive list, possibly re-arranged by types of food, or groups of people, or period, to make it flow together. It's basically the same as what you have here - ie, keeping all the etymologies together, and a brief history of each - but means you can keep a parallel list, which is fairly uncluttered, and a "conversational" article which is textually and link-heavy. I do honestly think this would work very well; it's a broad if slightly obscure topic, it fires people's interests, and the style of the article means you don't have to work very hard at repressing your voice, because it's the sort of thing where an individual style will accentuate it. Thoughts?
(I tend to view the goal of Wikipedia as a sort of bastard child of Usenet, an encylopedia, and Brewer's. This may be showing...) Shimgray 16:54, 6 May 2005 (UTC)


I'm beginning to think the Shimgray suggestion may be the answer. I want to think about it some more, but it makes a lot of sense. You can come back now, Thryduulf. I have recovered from my snit, and I am no longer in danger of spontaneous self-combustion. Thanks, S. --Mothperson 14:34, 7 May 2005 (UTC)

But NO TABLES. --Mothperson 14:39, 7 May 2005 (UTC)


I've spent a good deal of time thinking about this since yesterday. Shimgray's idea is a good one. But I won't do the article. The only reason I've been able to work on this list is that it is in manageable pieces - entries. To put an article together that I could stand would be as painful as writing a book, and I'm not willing to do that. I see three possibilities here, but first, a brief review.

It took 24 different people in 60 edits between September 15, 2003 and March 12, 2005 to come up with a list of 26 entries. Of these entries, two were flat out wrong, one was incorrect, one mispelled the person's name, one was inappropriate, one accepted a ridiculous bit of corporate p.r., and almost all of them were uncluttered to the point of being pointless.

Since March 12, I've added 161 entries, and two others have added three. Today the total is 188. As of today, I also have 117 more entries to do that I know about, and more that I haven't researched - at least another 60. I think this is a fairly significant contribution, given the fact that I try my best to make sure all the information is accurate. On average I spend 1-2 hours on each entry, and 3-4 on the more obscure ones. Some of the latter still aren't on the list because I can't verify them well enough.

As I won't write the article, there are three things that can be done.

  • Nothing.
  • Give me several months to finish, and then I will find a food site willing to take my version, and here it can be torn apart and turned into a proper Wiki list. Or table. Whatever.
  • I stop now, and go work on something else.

I regret being so uncooperative about Thryduulf's idea, but I've put too much time and energy into this to take it apart and start over. Someone else will have to do that. --Mothperson 22:26, 8 May 2005 (UTC)



[edit] Greengage

This page suggests that the greengage is named after William Gage, but Wikipedia's article says it is named after Thomas Gage. Which is right? Gdr 21:48, 2005 May 6 (UTC)


Probably moi. I see by my notes that I tracked him down through his baronet title (because there were several Sir William Gages), his county, and the year the plum was said to have been brought to England from France. Plus, I had already seen multiple references to Sir William Gage. Thomas is a new one to me. --Mothperson 22:01, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

Then please fix the greengage and Thomas Gage articles! Gdr 22:31, 2005 May 6 (UTC)


Okay. Rats. Now I have to face a question I was avoiding. What the heck is a baronet? --Mothperson 12:22, 7 May 2005 (UTC)
"A hereditary titled order of commoners, ranking next below barons and next above knights". Style themselves "Sir [Christian Name] [Surname], Bt." (also, of course, see Baronet). Basically, a hereditary knighthood. Shimgray 13:36, 7 May 2005 (UTC)
Thanks. I just had looked it up. I was confused about barons and baronets. Now I'm not. --Mothperson 14:21, 7 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] How to incorporate food names from other cultures?

What is the standard way of incorporating food names into this list which need to be romanized? --HappyCamper 23:58, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I'm sorry - I don't understand what you mean by romanizing. You mean they are in cyrillic or farsi or something like that? I'm all agog - please tell! --Mothperson 01:15, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Yes, that's what I mean. What about foods in Arabic, Chinese, and Tamil for example? How to put these into the list? Or would it be better to make a new list?
Um....could you please tell me what "agog" means? HappyCamper 03:44, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Now I am agog to see what the dictionary definition of "agog" is, but the way I use it, it means sort of slack-jawed with surprise and/or intense curiosity, probably goggle-eyed, and anticipating one's mind to be boggled, i.e. wanting to know more. Now the dictionary, and I hope I'm not in for a rude awakening.
Phew. "In a state of eager anticipation, excitement, or interest" from "ME agogge and OFr. a gogue joke, joyfulness." My dogs, when not asleep or bored, are in a perpetual state of being agog. But I digress. The reason I am agog is that I have seen virtually no foods outside " Western" culture (read Franco-Anglo-American) that are named after people. It is a frivolous notion, after all, and one that the more sensible peoples of other cultures (and Western ones, too - like Italy et al.) haven't taken up with any enthusiasm. They name foods descriptively, almost exclusively, it had seemed to me. For example, "Imam Bayildi", the Turkish dish, doesn't specify which imam fainted, and "General Tso's Chicken" seems to have been named by Chinese-Americans. Hence my state of eager anticipation.
To answer your question, I would say if you know of foods named after specific people that are in other alphabets (and they shouldn't be "so-and-so's recipe for" unless widely known by so-and-so's name), we can find people to help translate properly. For example, I know who's working on Tamil cuisine and Tamil people right now. I can pick out Arabic, but I wouldn't trust my translation. However, I'm working with someone in Saudi Arabia on another article, and there have got to be lots of others who can do it. And judging from what I've seen, there are plenty of people around who can handle Chinese. Could you do it yourself, with help?
So, short answer - no, don't start another list. I mean, you could, but as this list's unofficial scavenger-in-chief and guard dog, I'm too greedy to let such fascinating possibilities slip away. But I'm still agog, as you have knocked my personal naming theory all to hell if you really do have a bunch of these things from other cultures. Although...no, I have to see what they are before I get my hopes up.
I recognized your name from my frequent visits to the Help Desk, and I went to see what your interests were. I must say - I haven't even heard of 99% of the subjects, and wouldn't be able to understand about - oh - 100%? I must comfort myself with the fact that I probably know more about baked goods than you do. Humf. --Mothperson 12:56, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Okay, well, I guess I could participate by digging for some foods which aren't on the list yet. I brought up the original question because it seemed to me initially that it might be appropriate to say that the list tends to have foods of Western origin because of the reasons explained above. --HappyCamper 00:02, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Ah, well. I wish it weren't so. But then I keep forgetting to be careful what I wish for. I started working on this as a little entertainment a few months ago, and it turned me into a maniac. I see no end in sight, as yet. But I would have liked some non-Western stuff. I wouldn't eat most of what I've written about if you paid me.

The whole naming business is pretty much 18th - 19th-century French, spread to Britain and the U.S. (and to a lesser extent elsewhere) by French chefs. Power, wealth, and fame are the constants involved. Except for naming new fruits and vegetables, where Joe Blow is allowed.

Perhaps I should write up a list of the names I've already done most of the research on and haven't entered yet. If you like doing this kind of research, I also have a whole bunch of names I haven't researched yet, and some of them are pretty obscure. I can also tell you where you might look - places I haven't gotten to yet, if you have access to a great library (I don't), and also some primary on-line sources that I've only barely had a chance to look at.

I was going to start listing possibilities now, but I don't want to frighten you away. Let me know if there's anything that particularly interests you, or I will be drowning you with apples, pears and Escoffier. --Mothperson 01:16, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Well, I'm interested in anything really...I just wanted to volunteer and see what I could help with here. I'd just contribute whenever I have the time to, and hopefully in the process make the list better. A good place to start always helps :) Just suggest, say, a handful of names for starters, and I'll be able to take it from there. --HappyCamper 01:36, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Oh, golly. Lucky for you it's my bedtime. But I will have a "handful of names" for you by 15:00, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC). In the meantime, I have two words for you - Auguste Escoffier. The list contains only a few of his most famous dishes (Melba and some of his other "ladies"), as I have not even tried to get access to books by and about him (being somewhat afraid, I think). More later. --Mothperson 03:05, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Happy Camper

Where to start? First, my most confounding and/or annoying, therefore most desired:

  • Biff (beef) à la Lindstrom. Swedish. I cannot find who Lindstrom was.
  • A Hungarian - Munkácsy - 19th-century landscape painter, has a dish of jellied eggs in remoulade sauce named after him. I can't find him or the name of the dish. See note about artists at end.
  • Ettinger avocado - developed in Israel in second half of 20th century. I wouldn't advise this one, as I spent hours on it, and couldn't track down for sure who Ettinger was, despite some good possibilities. But I'm still curious.
  • Madeleines - I did the research. Hours. In March. But I have this odd resistance to writing it up, to the point where it's gotten ridiculous. Coummercy, France. Exiled king of Poland Stanislaus living in France where his nephew is king - one of the Louis's (I forget which). Pastry chef quits before making dessert. Local girl helps out with grandmother's recipe. That's my favorite version, but there are others. Mary Magdalen connections, et al. I have developed a Madeleine phobia. It's been on my to-do list countless days.
  • Dishes Doria - somebody related to Andrea Doria was living in Paris in the 19th century, Don't know who, and have forgotten dishes, other than Ranhofer's sweetbreads.
  • The Xavier de Bavoy apple (want more x's! and i's!)
  • Toque du President Adolphe Clerc - this is an interesting meat pie, the recipe for which was supposedly found by Brillat-Savarin's mother (la belle Aurore). Clerc was president of some obscure jurist thing in the town B-S was from. I don't know why I haven't followed it up.
  • Potage Camerani - a very famous soup once, invented, allegedly, by Camerani, who was some sort of comic actor in France (Italian, though). I don't know much more.

Now for stuff with less baggage. The following are things that Charles Ranhofer created in N.Y.C. between the 1860's - 1890's. Many of his names are doubtlessly lost in the mists of time (i.e. I wouldn't suggest you try "Poulet sauté à la Dodds," or "Salmon à la Bedlow", etc.), but sometimes when I've googled a name, I've been shocked to find the person was very famous in his/her time. So here are some dishes I've been meaning to follow up, which sound likely. Or you could go directly to the master yourself - hit the link for Charles Ranhofer's cookbook The Epicurean on Feeding America (it's somewhere on the list), readable in HTML or PDF, go to the second volume, and cruise the index at the end to see what might interest you. Or you could go to one of the other digitized cookbooks Feeding America has on-line ("Browse the Collection") and see what you can find. Victor Hirtzler might be productive, but there are lots of books available. Here are some of the dishes I've been meaning to follow up: (and the recipes are in The Epicurean, so again, the index is helpful to locate)

  • Hashed partridge Clémenceau
  • Kulibiac Smolenska
  • Œufs frits à la Eugéne André
  • Macaroni à la Brignoli
  • Lobster à la Gambetta
  • Goronflot cakes
  • Bonito à la Godivier
  • Kingfish Montgolfier (and I think others, in France)
  • Lamb Carbonnade à la Rambuteau
  • Veal kidneys à la Roederer, also other dishes - gâteau
  • anything St. Cloud, sweetbreads here, but also in France (it may be a place, but I have a feeling it's a person)
  • Omelet with caviare à la Stoeckel (and I think other dishes
  • Constantine "bomb"
  • Jambon décoré à la Gatti
  • Lamb croquettes à la De Rivas

and much much more...

Finally, there is the whole world of fruit: apples, pears, plums, cherries, avocadoes, et al. I won't even bother to list the names I've got stored in notebooks. Just google the fruits and you will find them. Vegetables might be another interesting search - potatoes, for example. That's where I found my first food named after an artist. Artists get short shrift in the food world. Probably because when they were alive, they were poor, so chefs had no reason to flatter them. And when they were dead - eh.

If you choose to work on Ranhofer stuff, it might help to know his political bent. As far as I can tell, he was a moderate republican, French and American.

Also, a big, flashing red warning. Do NOT trust food sites on the web. Most of them copy each other's inanities. And wiki isn't much better at times. Remember, this list once had listed Noah Ketchup, because the Great British Cooking site had an article that looked scholarly. How Jorgé Luis Avocado and Matthew Pilchard didn't make it on, I don't know.

But really, this can be a lot of fun. Many bizarre things to learn. --Mothperson 14:32, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Acknowledged. Yup, sounds fun. Might be better to move some of this stuff to my talk page, but for now, leave it here. Maybe some other Wikipedian would spot some of these things and be able to help out too! --HappyCamper 14:51, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I want it noted for future reference that I do not know you personally, nor anything about you other than what's on your pages, and I have had no opportunity to drug you or hypnotize you, or in any way interfere with your exercising your own free will. --Mothperson 15:05, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)
The sentiment is likewise duly reciprocated :) --HappyCamper 16:52, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)