A Typology of Dumplings (2019) | Hacker News Reader

A Typology of Dumplings (2019)

borstell.github.io

119 pointsnkurz68 comments

Interesting to see where the zeros show up on the distance matrix (aside from the diagonal). The similarity between manti and shumai (siomay in the article) was quite a surprise:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manti_(food)#/media/File:Ouzb%...

vs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shumai#/media/File:%E7%83%A7%E...

But that's also where I noticed both guotie and wonton were on the list, although guotie is basically a generic term for "potsticker." It's usually a fried jiaozi although sometimes a fried wonton is also called a guotie.

Traditionally Guotie is different from Jiaozi, it is a long roll with both side open, often with the same ingredients as jiaozi (cabbage with pork or mutton), but nowadays people are lazy and made guotie using jiaozi. You still be able to find traditional guotie in Taipei, but sadly seldom in China.

Love this. Reminds me of when I tried a git-based taxonomy of sauces a while back.

https://www.rmorrison.net/mnemozzyne/2019/01/20/saucy-chat/

Here’s the diff between tartar sauce and mayonnaise

https://github.com/mozz100/sauces/compare/mayonnaise..tartar

It is quite a comprehensive list. But for Chinese varieties, it missed Har Gow (Pronounced as Ha Gau in Cantonese or Xia Jiao in Mandarin) - Shrimp and bamboo shoots with wrapper made from Wheat starch), it is key Dim Sum dish from Cantonese cuisine, it looks like Jiaozi but different in both how the wrapper is made and the ingredients. Jiaozi is available only in North China, but Har Gow is only available in Cantonese cuisine. If you want to know if a Cantonese restaurant is good or bad, taste and inspect their Har Gow.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Har_gow

Great article. I am really interested how those dishes look like and quoted/mapped pictures from Wikipedia to the original graph. Want to experience all the tastes some day. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ecng5g0U0AAY_8c?format=jpg&name=...

I could not catch what are "British" "American" "Cotswold" such location names. Do those point local style dumplings?

> However, in the case of German Knödel and Czech knedlík, I decided to include both simply based on the fact that whereas the former was listed as potentially being served with a sweet filling, I did not observe this with the latter.

There are absolutely sweet Czech dumplings. Many kinds, usually with some sort of stone fruit (cherries, whole apricots, peaches, etc) but any kind of berry will do. They are also boiled, but they tend to have a different thinner dough that is farmer's/curd cheese and flour based, rather than being bready. They take a lot of practice to make well. If you're using smaller fruits like cherries or blueberries, they're near impossible to form without the trained hands of a Czech grandma.

Apricot ones are my favorite. You slice them in half, take out the pit, and dress them with grated/crumbled farmer's cheese, melted butter, and sugar.

Ahoj

1. What you call "farmer's cheese" is "tvaroh" which is called "quark" in English. It's not cheese, that would be gross.

2. Leaving the pit inside of the fruit that you wrap in a dumpling is sacrilegious. The fruit should be pitted!

In the US, you have to make do with what you can get... and "farmer's cheese" differs a lot throughout the US. In many places, it's pretty close to quark (when crumbled and with a little hydration added, at least).

The only big difference in preparation in many parts of the US (especially those with Eastern or Central European heritage) is how long it's pressed. It's otherwise the same thing: acid-curdled dairy with most of the moisture removed. A little Wondra or 00 flour helps if it won't take the right consistency.

As for the pit, it'd be fine either way. It's a bit easier to form with the pit in, and won't hurt the flavor at all, but removing it would be just fine too.

Yep, in Polish it's "twaróg" and as far as I can tell it doesn't exist in the Anglosphere, the closest word to it is "quark" but for instance British quark has absolutely nothing to do with Twaróg. In Polish it's also called "Biały ser"(white cheese) even though it has nothing to do with cheese.

And yes, you'd need to be some kind of a monster to leave the pit in the fruit used for dumplings.

Czech sweet dumplings, when made properly, are reasonably good substitute for dental glue. If I remember correctly we called them "hairy dumplings".

Those don't sound like they were made properly...

Since this is getting a few votes, I might as well ask the question that led me to this page: How do Belorussian Kalduny differ from Polish Pierogi, Ukranian Vareniki, and Russian Pelmeni?

To steal mercilessly from Wikipedia:

The most important difference between pelmeni, varenyky, and pierogi is the thickness of the dough shell—in pelmeni and vareniki this is as thin as possible, and the proportion of filling to dough is usually higher. Pelmeni are never served with a sweet filling, which distinguishes them from vareniki and Polish pierogi, which sometimes are. Also, the fillings in pelmeni are usually raw, while the fillings of vareniki and pierogi are typically precooked.

Those distinctions seem about right in my experience, and I eat all three fairly often, since I go to a lot of cultural festivals.

This seems like an accurate description. Unfortunately, these three are the ones I'm more familiar with, and I was hoping to understand how Kalduny compare to these. The Wikipedia article for them (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalduny) basically says they are similar, but doesn't really get into the differences.

It seems that there are dough kalduny but when I'd been to Belarus I never seen those and people just called dough dumplings either "pelmeni" (with meat) or "varenniki" with other fillings. Kalduny were potato shells with meat filling (similar to Irish boxty).

In Lithuania the word for 'Pelmeni' is 'Koldunai', and as Russian language is still going strong in Belarus, Pelmeni is widely used, although I don't know if it's prevalent over 'Kalduny'. Not sure were the word originated. In Russia 'Vareniki' is basically the broad term for the non-meat dumplings (with potato/quark/cherry/mushroom stuffing).

The article on knödel on wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knödel is a hot mess. I was curious to see a distinction between knedlik and knodel so I looked at this and, aside from its over-reliance on German terminology, it seems to contradict itself internally. I grew up with English terms for the dumplings that I ate, which were primarily plum dumplings (very rarely with other fruit) and bread dumplings. In my limited experience, knödel is just the German word for what Czechs call knedlik, but I just eat them, I'm not an authority.

In German, Knödel can be both a generic term for some class of dumplings or mean something more specific. There are regional differences and a lot of context.

Lots of dumplings also have multiple names in different regions.

One of my favourite names is Dampfnudeln. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dampfnudel The names means steam(ed) noodles, but they are a kind of dumpling.

This lacks a huge amount of variety from Asian dumplings. What about xiaolongbao? Or shengjianbao? Or shuijianbao?

Indeed. Xiaolongbao are awesome.

It's on github, so you can probably send a pull request.

Agree. In fact before clicking the link I thought it was about Chinese dumplings. There a probably enough variety to warrant a whole separate article.

As a Chinese, we don't categorised Bao as Jiao (dumplings), they are different both in shape and wrapper, and cooking (Bao is steam and never boiled with water).

If you live in SF, you have the chance of tasting one of the best dumplings in the world: “dumpling specialist”.

I hate giving out this gem because it’s such a small place and it sucks when these places go popular. But holy shit this is next level.

Are they open during the pandemic? Oh man, gtg.

If not, there are a few dumpling wholesalers in the area. Great way to stock up the freezer.

Do you have specific recommendations? Our freezer is nearly empty.

Kingdom of Dumplings (retail shop a few blocks from its restaurant - call restaurant and ask them) is great. It’s like ~$7-10 for a bag (I believe). They also have scallion pancakes frozen. I last went at the beginning of shelter-in-place

*edit - cash only, FYI

"Asian American Food Company" / Kingdom of Dumplings, and Yummy Dumpling.

Is Yummy open atm? I used to live down Irving, but have only tasted their dumplings at King of Noodles across the street.

Not sure, but house of pancakes has excellent dumplings as well. Besides these two places I don’t think I found other good dumpling places in SF.

Fun article indeed but the data the author has collected, however, is sloppy. Being Turkish, I needed to verify "mantı" on the binary coded features table I and saw, to my dismay, that only the "steamed" is marked "1" among the cooking options, which is wrong even if you consider all variations. Even the wikipedia page correctly states that it is usually boiled or baked.

I was just about to reply saying this, I'm a little disappointed in the author's misunderstanding of our dumpling :'(

I had no idea khinkali were so similar to xiaolongbao!

The next step: dumplings2vec, or some other dimensionality reduction.

BTW: I am curious about word vectors for dumplings. For each dumpling kind, there is some variation of servings, size, culture and everything. I guess that the word usage tells a lot. For general food quantification, see https://www.nature.com/articles/srep00196, https://jaan.io/food2vec-augmented-cooking-machine-intellige... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingredient-flavor_network.

(A personal note: a strong fan of "pierogi ruskie" here.)

The unanswered question is: is a jelly donut a sweet dumpling?

Only if all donuts are dumplings, since the jelly is added after cooking.

Pop Tart

or is a tartine a pizza?

By commutativity of the copula, a jelly donut is a former US President. Now the remaining question is: was JFK a sweet dumpling?

(guess someone with better connections will have to ask this no-longer-little girl: https://i1.wp.com/jfk.blogs.archives.gov/wp-content/uploads/... )

Is Korean “mandu” (만두) listed under some other name? Can’t spot it in the dataset.

In my 20 I travelled the world when people asked me what I learned from it I always replied : There is no place in the world without dumplings

I noticed there's a Lithuanian "Cepelinai" mentioned there. "Cepelinai" aren't dumplings in a traditional sense, mainly because there's no flour used for the outer shell - only potatoes.

The real dumpling in Lithuanian is "Koldūnai".

Very good, but they left out quenelles! https://www.frenchcountryfood.com/recipes/fish-or-seafood/qu...

Would be nice if the properties would be ordered by diversity (most homogeneous leftmost, most diverse right), and then the whole list ordered by binary values O:)

Wonderful! But now how would one organize it into a coherent structure like the Köppen climate classification?

Made me smile. Also a lot of interesting words that could be used for future startup companies here :)

As a dumpling enthusiast, thank you OP. @OP noodles are deconstructed dumplings. What do you think?

IHNJ, IJLS "eigendumpling"

It's good that it has pierogi, but it miss varenyky and also paliushky

No spaetzle?

Spätzle are great, but calling them dumplings would really stretch the definition past breaking.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sp%C3%A4tzle

There are things called dumplings that don't have a filling. Both sweet and savoury.

Eg Golden Syrup Dumplings, and what we call a British or Irish Dumpling served atop a stew.

We also called Spätzle 'dumplings', too, and usually served with a Austrian/Hungarian style goulash.

I think the key differentiator from pasta is that they're a thicker item rather than thin-walled tubes/shapes or strands.

If Spätzle are dumplings, then so are gnocchi. Fight me!

Both are dumplings.

TFA has gnocchi and matzo balls, so I think spätzle ought to be admissible as 0-dumplings (where a filled dumpling is a 1-dumpling). Proper dumplings would then be those dumplings with at least one layer of filling. Are there any 2-dumplings or higher, the dumpling equivalent of turducken?

(future work: classification of dumplings with handles, immersions of Klein Dumplings in cooking oil, ...)

In the North of the Netherlands, there exists the _eierbal_ - a hard boiled egg, with a layer of ragout, and then a crust. Then deep fried.

I love that I can mention it and be on topic on HN. I now live in the middle of the country and miss it.

How about lasagne?

Oh for sure. Lasagnas are deconstructed dumplings in disguise.

How thick does the breading have to be before fried chicken is a dumpling?

That’s an amazing concept. If samosa is a dumpling we can make fried chicken dumplings work

Yes, dumplings don't need a fillings. But Spätzle are usually too thin to be called dumplings in my understanding. I'd call them a kind of noodle or pasta.

Wikipedia, the final arbiter of all truth, agrees. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sp%C3%A4tzle

They are generally defined as dumplings. The Typology of Dumplings clearly acknowledges that dumplings are not necessarily filled.

I think this is great because it invites discussion. As an Italian, I'd like to point out that tortellini can be fried, shallow, in a skillet, and tossed with hearty greens.

I'll have to try this some time.

You can fry almost any kind of dumpling, and get something interesting and tasty.

How the F do you not have "Pierogi" on this list is beyond me. It's basically Polish national food at this point. And who calls Pierogi "Kluski" lol.

But it is on the list though

Pierogi is in the list, did you try to ctrl-f?

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