Talk:smoked salmon

RFD discussion: February–July 2023

The following information passed a request for deletion (permalink).

This discussion is no longer live and is left here as an archive. Please do not modify this conversation, but feel free to discuss its conclusions.

---

smoked salmon

SOP. PUC – 10:48, 18 February 2023 (UTC)

No reference is made at smoked to flavour, compared to unsmoked which does refer to flavour. When it comes to flavour, I prefer unsmoked bacon to smoked bacon. This entry doesn't explain that smoked salmon is considered a delicacy, and that may be due to its flavour. I am inclined to keep, subject to revision. DonnanZ (talk) 06:20, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

Delete. Vininn126 (talk) 09:13, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

Delete as SoP. I am not sure how a flavour should be defined in this case, or why this is necessary since it is essentially the flavour that food has after it has been preserved by treatment with smoke, which is sense 1 of smoked. It seems redundant to define smoked as “preserved by treatment with smoke, or having the flavour of something preserved by treatment with smoke”, unless there are foods which taste smoked without actually having been smoked. Would such foods then be called “smoked”? Even if smoked should be redefined in this way, smoked salmon would still be SoP. — Sgconlaw (talk) 09:47, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

I also don't see how Donnan's dietary preference is particularly relevant... Vininn126 (talk) 09:50, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

The name is Donnanz, and I was illustrating a point. Flavour or taste, if the smoking of food products affects those, it can affect people's preferences. You may or may not like the flavour of "smoky bacon flavour crisps". DonnanZ (talk) 10:48, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

Smoked salt is not food preserved by smoking.  --Lambiam 23:16, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

That is an error in the existing definition of smoked; it should indeed either say "flavoured or preserved ..." (Wikipedia has various other verbs) or simply something like "treated with smoke" (the OED has "impregnated with"). —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 00:11, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

Weak keep .... I'm really of two minds with this entry. I always think of English language learners and young children first when something like this comes up .... what seems like an obvious sum-of-parts definition to us might not be so obvious to someone who's just picking up the language, and who might not be familiar with eating habits in the wider world. For example, until now, there was no definition of salmon indicating that people sometimes eat just a small part of the fish. Seems obvious to us, right? Well, I figured it couldnt hurt, so I added a new definition to the base word. However I admit that this eliminates the need for a separate page for smoked salmon. All I can really come up with, besides what I've said already, is that the existence of this page shows readers that this dish exists and is more common than for example smoked chicken, smoked flounder, and the like, which probably also exist but are not popular enough to be every day items in a restaurant or supermarket. A particular combination of two words that is more common than other semantically similar combinations might be arguably, weakly, something more than the sum of its parts. Lastly, there is lox, which is listed as a subtype of smoked salmon, and would be orphaned if we delete this page. —Soap— 14:42, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

Searching for collocations of "smoked" on COCA gives us dozens of other such words. Should we include all of those? I think not, it'd make more sense to add many collocations. Vininn126 (talk) 14:57, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

Keep per Soap. Binarystep (talk) 18:32, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

Delete as SOP, except possibly as a THUB, this is what collocations are for. I think it's unhelpful to learners because it makes it seem like something that should be learned as a unit. Drapetomanic (talk) 02:48, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

Keep per Donnanz and Soap, with the entry modified. The definition should add that it is a delicacy; merely stating that it's a salmon which has been cured by smoking fails to capture this aspect. This additional nuance separates "smoked salmon" from "smoked jerky". Furthermore, it is useful for hosting translations. Megathonic (talk) 22:05, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

Weak keep per Megathonic. If a non-SOP definition can be provided to the entry, then I suppose it should be kept. Otherwise I'd vote to Delete. – Guitarmankev1 ^(talk) 19:05, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

• Leaning keep. There are certainly cultural nuances within which "smoked salmon" specifically means the fileted delicacy. I know some mothers who would expect it to mean only that (the same ones who refer to a standing rib roast as roast beef). bd2412 T 19:13, 22 March 2023 (UTC)
• Comment The vast majority of the time 'smoked salmon' refers to smoked thin slices of raw salmon rather than cooked salmon that is smoked to flavour it but it CAN refer to cooked salmon. I recently had cooked smoked salmon for the first time ever in fact, so I don't have strong opinions about this entry. --Overlordnat1 (talk) 14:43, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

Keep, not SOP, also LEMMING. Cf. smoked meat, smoked beef, salt beef, fried egg, poached egg, etc. - TheDaveRoss 12:38, 26 May 2023 (UTC)

@TheDaveRoss: I've closed this RFD as kept, but could you explain to me how smoked salmon is not SOP? PUC – 10:39, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

@PUC it certainly exists in the border region between SOP and not, and I don't think people are crazy for considering it SOP. In this case, I think of smoked salmon as a discrete thing, unlike diced onions or something. I might be wrong. - TheDaveRoss 12:32, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

Keep. I've separated and slightly rewritten the idiomatic meaning and used the &lit template to cover the literal meaning, so that even though the literal meaning is technically SOP it can still be included. This is a similar approach to take a knee, which is the entry that inspired me to handle it that way. --Overlordnat1 (talk) 01:34, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

Observations: our definition does not agree with Wikipedia's; and I don't see why the citation under sense 2 cannot go under sense 1, unless it's about being "cut into strips", which is not AFAIK a necessary criterion for smoked salmon anyway. Equinox ◑ 01:35, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

The Wikipedia article deals with the idiomatic sense of smoked salmon and refers to salmon being cut into either strips or fillets, which are surely just thick strips anyway? It does say that fish are sometimes hung from hooks and smoked whole in Scotland but they would be cut into strips before being eaten, usually after being sold and served first. The quote I added refered to 'salmon flakes', which tells us that the salmon in question has been cooked before being smoked - demonstrating that it is talking about smoked salmon in a literal but non-idiomatic sense. --Overlordnat1 (talk) 02:39, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

RFD-kept. PUC – 23:46, 3 July 2023 (UTC)