Talk:Minestrone

Recipe

I removed this from the article:

Cut up an onion, a stick of celery, and a carrot; fry them in butter and salt; add a few bits of cooked ham and veal cut up, two mushrooms, and the pulp of a tomato. Cook for a quarter of an hour, and add a little stock occasionally to keep it moist. Pass through a sieve, and use for seasoning minestre, macaroni, rice, etc. It should be added when the dish is nearly cooked.

Source: The Cook's Decameron: A Study In Taste, Containing Over Two Hundred Recipes For Italian Dishes from a project that puts out-of-copyright texts into the public domain.

This is from a very old source, and reflects the cooking at the turn of the last century.

This is not a cookbook, it is an encyclopedia. While this article is fine (and could use more information), we don't include recipes for dishes, unless it is very public domain and simple: like how to mix a screwdriver. I beleive there is some Wikibook for recipes, but I don't have the energy to look for it. If someone finds it, the recipe above can be added to it. — Frecklefoot | Talk 19:28, Jun 14, 2005 (UTC)

Large Contribution

67.83.205.131 added a large section here, not sure where it's from, does someone want to contact him and check for copyright violation? It is signed "Contributed by alessandro petti (alexanderpetti@hotmail.com) Aug 2005 Edited by David Mckenzie"

— Hobart 03:43, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

Roman pasta?

The article claims that the Roman army is said to have marched on pasta faggioli. That would certainly be an interesting accomplishment, at least ten centuries before Marco Polo brought noodles to Italy. If there’s no evidence for that, it should be removed; if it’s a folk saying there should be a citation or a clarification. crism 04:46, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Beans

Removed, following the Roman army reference:

"This seems unlikely as beans originated in the Americas. Beans were not introduced into Europe until many centuries later."

I have no idea what the Roman army marched on, but beans were known in the ancient Mediterranean... at least well enough for the Pythagoreans to make eating them a taboo! The American species isn't the only one around.

24.34.85.32 (talk) 06:05, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps they meant tomatos? SoManyWhales (talk) 18:38, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia's guidelines require a citation for exceptional claims, claims that go against conventional wisdom, quotes, and scientific data. It does not require citations for statements that do not contradict what is common knowledge and are not questionable in nature. A Google search for "Minestrone recipe" gets 319,000 hits. It's blatantly obvious that there's no fixed recipe, or it would not be minestrone and only one recipe would be found. I'm removing the "citation needed" for the statement that there's no fixed recipe. By definition, something that's the name for a variety of soups has no fixed recipe. 208.127.242.6 (talk) 22:53, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Well, I added the tags, and I've restored them, but I'm happy to talk about it here. Firstly, I disagree with your definition - where does it come from? And who says minestrone able to be vegetarian? I've been told that it has to contain bacon to be minestrone (and pasta as well) - but since I don't have a reference, I couldn't include it in the article. But maybe the bulk of those google hits are not actually using the word correctly. Or maybe there are two definitions of minestrone - a narrow definition and a loose definition. The thing is - we can't know unless we have a credible reference. So it's not common knowledge, nor is it unquestionable. StAnselm (talk) 03:39, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

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Dos Etymologos

Why are there two mutually exclusive etymologies in this article? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.224.44.77 (talk) 03:07, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Seems it's been a year since this anon commented and I'd like to second this. I've heard the "big soup" explanation more often (which of course does not mean it's more accurate), while the second etymology seems to explain the origin of "minestra", Italian for soup, rather than specifically minestrone. However, my knowledge of Latin and Italian is minimal at best and this article needs more than that.

I removed the (big soup) claim at the top of the article and revised the Etymology section. Minestra is Italian for soup and -one is an augmentative suffix. It could be translated as "big soup," but that is perhaps too literal. In any case, saying that it means "big soup" does not aid understanding, but rather confuses. Why is it big? Is it made in large quantities? Are the vegetables big? And so on. It is sufficient to say that minestra means soup and -one is an augmentative suffix.

Under Etymology, I made changes to improve conciseness. It is not necessary to cite every etymologically related word (i.e., "minister" and "minus"); in fact, doing so clearly caused confusion since an editor in the History section of this article refers the reader to the Etymology section for the 14th c. appearance of minestrone. Quite apart from being OR (that's another copy-edit) it is incorrect; the 14th c. is when the verb "to minister" appeared in English. It has nothing whatever to do with vegetable soup except for deriving ultimately from the same Latin root. Richigi (talk) 18:59, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

History of minestrone

Does anyone else think the history section is a little heavy on information that only indirectly applies to the history of minestrone? Reading it you would almost think that pulte is a synonym for minestrone (it is not). A clear (sourced) statement that pulte is the historical antecedent of minestrone is called for. I removed/abbreviated a few blocks: 1) a long quote from a researcher about Roman aesthetics (it did not pertain to Minestrone); 2) reference to the first Roman bakeries (it is enough to say Romans got bread); 3) a long analogy involving Patella Lucretiana (comparison is not needed, just say minestrone is made from leftovers).

It still needs quite a bit of work to make it more succinct and encyclopedic in style, and many statements are still unreferenced. Richigi (talk) 21:47, 17 November 2012 (UTC)