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long time nick shu......where you been? I miss the animal within the animal bawdy thread.......hope you are well.

OY Boys, it's been several years since I've been in the heart of a kosher kitchen for any length of time....though cholent is more than familiar...


So, catagorizing sandwiches in a Linnean (sp?) taxonomy method, what would it look like?

Sandwiches over encompassing
Burgers a subset
turnovers/pies/calazones/empanadas ?
tacos/quesadillas/peking duck?
dumplings?
finger/open faced are sandwiches but seem like they need alittle offshoot
Pate Choux with goo?
taquitos

if any of the resident dorks are feeling super dorky, it'd be fun to see a chart and talk where shtuff would go.....
 
Hiya Shroomgirl, it has been a while. In a nutshell, i have been quite busy over the last 4 years, working for a labour agency. It has been good, from saving small family businesses from themselves to doing sit down dinners for 5000+. However, i think this going to be an interesting year to say the least.

Anyway, i would most likely classify in the following taxonomy:

Sandwiches
Burgers (as a subset. Mcdonalds refers to burgers as sandwiches)
Finger and Open face sandwiches (subset, variation of the theme)

Separate Groupings
Baked Pastries: Empanadas, Turnovers, Pies, Calzone and Choux n goo
Steamed Pastries: Chinese Buns and Dumplings
Tortillas and Pancakes: Quesdillas, Taquitos, Soft Tacos and Peking Duck
Hard Tacos
 
A hamburger IS a sandwich. Sandwich's consists of .......whatever you like between two slices of bread. Hamburger is just another word for ground beef.....which was also called Hamburg Steak (from germany). Today anything considered ground is tagged with burger (chickenburger, Turkeyburger). But it is still considered a sandwich.
 
You're all wrong. The historical stages of precedence go: Frankfurt, Hamburg, Lord Sandwich. The hamburger is a member of the class frankfurter, and the sandwich is a further step down the taxonomic tree. All three are processed protein surrounded ("sandwiched," or more properly "franked" like postage stamps) by bread, with various condiments.

That's assuming, of course, that we want to factor in time, as in the modern revisions of the Linnaean system. We could do a straight Linnaean taxonomy, in which case we'd have to decide which system of these foods is the one studied (bread, meat, processing, cooking, condiments...), or a polythetic taxonomy studying all the many factors present in a wide distribution of all these foods, leading to definitions based on statistical variation. Or of course there's always Goethe's morphological system....
 
SUPER DORK!!!! How bout them all, then there could be a discussion on the whys and hows in the differences....:bounce::)

Ok Chris, you gotta be a scientist cus culinary schools just don't teach the systems you've mentioned at least not into that kind of detail.

1976, an 80+ year old Irish nun was teaching microbiology at the college I was attending in New Orleans, our long standing joke was that she was around when there were only 13 elements. Tougher than nails, that petit woman wore a FULL to the ground (not sure if it was wool) habit with headgear, year round in the southern Louisiana heat.....it could be 100+ degrees with 100% humidity and STILL not be raining. Forget ****'s Angels, this woman was tough.
 
Yay, I'm a bigger dork than you are!

(Actually I'm not a scientist, but I am in part a historian of science. Nobody teaches all these systems -- never did. The old Linnaean system died before the modern version of the polythetic got developed, and Goethe's morphology died when Darwinian evolution rewrote Linnaeus' system. Isn't that interesting? No really, I've published on this, and.... Hello? Hello? Anybody?)

But I still say that properly speaking, hamburgers aren't sandwiches -- sandwiches and hamburgers are weenies. Like me. :crazy:
 
The amazing thing about Linnaeus in light of modern biological taxonomy which is more genetic than anything else, is how right he was about so very many things. Smart man. Goethe and Darwin, yep. Smart too. Alton Brown? Not quite in the same class.

BDL
 
Since this thread was just brought to the forefront, I decided to scroll through it.

The hamburger as we know it today, was first created in my home state of Connecticut, at a place called Louies lunch in New Haven. A place I have been to countless times and still frequent when I am in the New Haven area. They are made the same way they have been since they were created over a hundred years ago. In an upright gas broiler grilled with the onions. Served on toasted sliced white bread, not a bun.
 
Reading this post, I see people keep referring to the bread as the difference between a burger and a sandwich. But while I agree there's a difference between the two, this is most definitely not it.

The difference is in the meat. To me, a burger is minced meat put together in pattie form between two pieces of bread.

A sandwich is any kind of meat/ veggies/ condiments/ whatever you prefer to put between two pieces of bread.

I like to think of it as a square is a rectangle but a rectangle is not necessarily a square.

Therefore, a burger is a sandwich, but a sandwich is not necessarily a burger.

Think of it this way, if I took a hot dog and put a piece of white bread around it, you wouldn't all of a sudden call it a sandwich. Same with minced, pattied meat.

The bread doesn't matter. It's all about how the meat is prepared.
 
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