Talk:How to Cook in Palestine

Request move - bad translation of the book

Requested move 19 February 2024

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: not moved. (closed by non-admin page mover) – Hilst [talk] 13:06, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

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How to Cook in Palestine → How to Cook in the Land of Israel – although the book was published in the British Mandate of Palestine the title clearly reffers to the erea as "The Land of Israel" (Eretz Israel) The translation of the title should be an accurate translation of the book title. GvTara (talk) 10:26, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

• oppose, as there has been an english version published by the same publisher, and the book title in english was “How to cook in Palestine”. Mkfreal (talk) 20:29, 19 February 2024 (UTC)
• Support based on literal translation (and on a presumed desire of the writers) FortunateSons (talk) 12:07, 20 February 2024 (UTC)
• Oppose. Use the title as it was published in English and as it is referred to in English sources like the ones in the article — How to Cook in Palestine. WP:COMMONNAME WP:UE ("In deciding whether and how to translate a foreign name into English, follow English-language usage."). I have also done a cursory Google search, and the results for those respective titles were 45,400 to 7, so the proposed title is evidently not in even somewhat common use. SilverLocust 💬 05:04, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Wrong transaltion

The book is called 'How to Cook in the Land of Israel' and it is being translated incorrectly all over the article 2A0D:6FC2:6010:5E00:F099:6503:CD4E:D358 (talk) 15:22, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

See above discussion. This is already decided and consensus has been reached. Catalyzzt (talk) 15:49, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

Did you know nomination

( Comment or view )

( Article history links:

• How to Cook in Palestine
• Erna Meyer

)

Meyer in 1970

• ... that Erna Meyer (pictured) urged the Jewish immigrant readers of How to Cook in Palestine to try alien foods—like olives and eggplants—but doubted their ability to eat "spicy food" like the "native population"?

• Source: "Immigrant women are expected to overcome their reluctance towards Palestinian staples like eggplants, zucchini, olives and okra." (Alianov-Rautenberg 2023, p. 181) "... she points out the limits of the Europeans’ adaptation to the 'spicy food' of the 'native population'." (Müller 2024, pp. 182–183)

• Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Paul R. Anderson (2× nom)

Created by Surtsicna (talk). Number of QPQs required: 2. Nominator has 239 past nominations.

Surtsicna (talk) 00:15, 24 July 2025 (UTC).

• Comment: @Surtsicna: your hook is over the length limit by 11 characters, although it should probably be much shorter than that. Please shorten it or come up with other ones. Viriditas (talk) 00:12, 25 July 2025 (UTC)

Oddly enough, Viriditas, the counter is confused by the two ndashes. It's 199 characters without them. Also, since it is a double hook, "How to Cook in Palestine" should not count (WP:DYK200) so we're down to 175 characters. Surtsicna (talk) 00:29, 25 July 2025 (UTC)

Thank you. Who knew this was going to be an educational experience for me? I will review. Viriditas (talk) 00:38, 25 July 2025 (UTC)

@Surtsicna: are you missing a second QPQ? Viriditas (talk) 00:40, 25 July 2025 (UTC)

No, Viriditas, the reviewed hook is also a double hook. And I learned something too: to avoid typing out ndashes! I hope you'll enjoy the articles. I am in contact with a great-grandnephew who is trying to find some photos of Meyer for us. Too bad the book cover seems to be copyrighted however I try to cut it. Surtsicna (talk) 00:42, 25 July 2025 (UTC)

Excellent. So length and QPQ are good. Looking at your hook, two things come to my mind. I've personally written about foodways in many articles. As you well know, different disciplines have various jargon. Is "alien foods" an actual term in foodways? I've never heard it before, so I'm skeptical. I think you are combining terms from other disciplines in a unique way here, which is probably fine in creative writing or for an opinion piece but uncommon for the encyclopedia. It isn't clear what the appropriate term is here in foodways, but you have a large list to choose from: foreign foods, local foods, new foods, native foods, indigenous foods, unfamiliar foods, culturally foreign foods, etc. Also, why quote common words like "spicy food" and "native population" instead of paraphrasing (piquant or pungent; heavily seasoned; local inhabitants, indigenous communities, existing population, etc.) Viriditas (talk) 00:56, 25 July 2025 (UTC)

This is my first time writing about foodways so I am happy to take your advice, Viriditas. I chose "alien" because it was shorter than "unfamiliar" (the character limit!) but also precisely because alien food turning out to be eggplants and olives sounded just a little bit funny. It's certainly not unheard of,[1][2] but I will not claim that it is an established term because I do not know. I decided to quote Meyer because the cited sources do so too; one of them does so when discussing how Meyer pointedly refuses to name the "native people". The quotation marks very subtly draw attention to this, I think. Of course, we can also do without them, or with just the second set. Surtsicna (talk) 02:08, 25 July 2025 (UTC)

@Surtsicna: Those are pretty solid sources and credentialed authors, so that neutralizes my concern about the wording. I read through Erna Meyer and made a few copyedits. I'm currently reading through How to Cook in Palestine and this sentence slightly confused me: "To Meyer, European culinary habits were marked by minimal use of fresh dairy..." I find this confusing because you just finished explaining that "Meyer considered herself and her audience to be Europeans", so you are using this context on purpose, but when you say European habits made use of minimal fresh dairy it seems you are in fact alluding to halachic concerns and not the larger European consumption of dairy. I only bring this up because I recently wrote about Norwegians traveling to Hawaii in the 1870s, and one of the major points of contention was that Norwegians consumed far more dairy at home than they were provided in Hawaii, and this made its way into the literature. So, are you talking about the minimal use of dairy by Europeans in the 1930s or the minimal use of dairy by European Jews? Because, unless something happened between 1870 and 1930 that would limit dairy consumption, it seems questionable. Perhaps dairy consumption was reduced relative to other countries due to the impact of WWI and the lack of refrigeration? Still, it seems odd. Perhaps the author means consumption of dairy was minimal by European Jews and not Europe in general. Viriditas (talk) 09:59, 25 July 2025 (UTC)

That's an excellent observation, Viriditas. The cited source does not state or at all imply that the "lack of consumption of fresh dairy products" was peculiar to the Jews; it just says that Meyer considered it a European habit. But she does otherwise often refer to the Jews' European habits and advises her readers to dispense with them, so it is perfectly possible that this is what she has in mind when she writes about dairy. On the other hand, the word "fresh" might be key here. Perhaps we can say "insufficient consumption" or "what Meyer deemed an insufficient consumption". Surtsicna (talk) 12:20, 25 July 2025 (UTC)

General: Article is new enough and long enough
New enough: Long enough:

Policy: Article is sourced, neutral, and free of copyright problems
Adequate sourcing: Neutral: Free of copyright violations, plagiarism, and close paraphrasing:

Hook: Hook has been verified by provided inline citation
Cited: Interesting:

QPQ: Done.

Overall: Double nom: Erna Meyer was created new; How to Cook in Palestine was expanded more than 5x. Both are long enough. Meyer contains some minor matches over at Earwig, but these fall below any level of concern. There are only so many ways you can say x did y. Concerns about hooks discussed and answered above. Source material provided up above. Aside from the one concern I made note of about the ambiguity regarding the "minimal use of fresh dairy", everything looks good. The prose is professional and the hook is interesting. I do wonder why the hook uses the en dash instead of the em dash, but I think you are doing so based on your unique regional usage. However, I think it reads much better without dashes or commas. Great work. Viriditas (talk) 10:56, 25 July 2025 (UTC)

I am very grateful for such a detailed review. If I continue working on this article, I'll definitely ask you for a GA review too. Surtsicna (talk) 12:20, 25 July 2025 (UTC)

We have the photo! The quality is not splendid, but I think it does well in this size. Email confirmation is on its way. Surtsicna (talk) 11:54, 26 July 2025 (UTC)

Good news. I realize most people are against AI here, but that is one thing AI photo enhancement can do well. There's a guy on YouTube who restores old photos using AI tools and his work is incredible. In fact, it's so good, I really want to learn how to do it. Viriditas (talk) 00:23, 28 July 2025 (UTC)