Talk:French toast

Dry bread vs stale bread.

Under preparation and serving, dry bread and stale bread are made appear to be synonymous terms, which they are not. Which is better for french bread? I do not know.

Cornell University: Wikipedia Class Project

Cornell University: Wikipedia Class Project

We are Cornell students all enrolled in a class called Online Communities. Here is a link to our class page. Education Program:Cornell University/Online Communities (Fall 2013)

For one of our class assignments we have to pick a C-Class article on Wikipedia and expand, edit, and elaborated it to create a better article. Lauren and I are both Communications majors and Royce is an Information Science major. We are relatively new to Wikipedia so please be patient with us and help guide us in the right direction if we are doing something wrong! 0 Fun fact, Jesus Christ ate this eggy bread/french toast/gypsy toast the day before he was crucified he ate this for breakfast. Jesus was so full he decided to just have bread and wine for his dinner commonly known as his last supper. This is why this is called soul food and is commonly eaten with kentucky fried chicken. It was called Jesus Crust for hundreds of years afterwards but eventually became Nun's bread in Monastery circles. Source: French toast in ancient Rome - http://www.foodtimeline.org/foodfaq1.html#frenchtoast #yoloswag sswweervve — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.245.41.193 (talk) 12:43, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

We will be working on elaborating on all the sections with more specific details. We will also be working to incorporate more references into the articles as well as images. We are still collecting sources so as we get more we will make sure to post them so everyone can know where we are getting our information from.

Shannon: I will be working on elaborating on the preparation and variations of French Toast.

Lauren: I will be working on developing and elaborating more on the history of French Toast. For example: where it came from and how the name was developed.

Royce: I will be making sure that all the formatting is correct because I am familiar with coding and using the Wikipedia language. I will also be elaborating with the Pain perdu section as well as adding a recipe section — Preceding unsigned comment added by ShannonClare06 (talk • contribs) 17:15, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

Feedback from Niteshgoyalwiki (talk)

• Move the Template for Educational Assignment to the top of the Talk Page. It doesn't exist as of now.
• There is a response in your talk page post to comments by Prof. Leshed - you should follow that to see what changes occurred and what needs to be done.
• It will be a good idea to talk to other contributors (and the person who commented to Prof. Leshed) to follow up on suggestions and talk to other wikipedians about your concrete plans on what you want to add and modify in the article.
• You might want to look at existing encyclopedias or food article written chefs about the variations of French Toast for content, in addition to content that you (will) propose.
• Remember to nominate your article to did you know by the end of class on Oct 1. Niteshgoyalwiki (talk) 15:15, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

Feedback from Prof. Leshed

You have chosen an interesting article to expand! Here are some comments to help you get started:

• Add the course assignment template at the top of the talk page.
• Sign all posts on the talk page with four tildes ~~~~ so that your post doesn't go "unsigned".
• The mentors need more information beyond "we will be elaborating all the section with more specific details" - provide more information about what details you plan to add to which section. For example, Shannon, what details will you add to the preparation and variations of French Toast - what details are missing there that you are planning to add? Where will you be getting references from and images from?
• Add a link to your user pages from this proposal.

Happy editing! LeshedInstructor (talk) 20:38, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

Hi students. I think your project sounds like a great idea - however, be aware that this article has been cleaned up significantly in the last year - see this version for a reference as to what was cut - http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=French_toast&oldid=526280738 阝工巳几千凹父工氐 (talk) 10:16, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

Hi Professor! I was just catching up on your comments. I was busy studying and stressing over the LSATs so I did not have a ton of time to really digest everything. I wanted to see if some of the progress we made was okay. We have noted some more specific edits in the talk page and I am currently working on a rough draft of some of my parts in the sandbox. ShannonClare06 (talk) 01:11, 8 October 2013 (UTC)ShannonClare06

Cornell students, great to have you here. Contributing to a Wikipedia article on a topic is a great way to learn more about the topic, to understand how collaborative editing works, and to contribute to a great public resource.

Unfortunately, I must say that I am disappointed in the quality of the edits over the past few days. (Though I don't know if they're all by Cornell students.) Here are a few observations:

• A lot of words have been added without adding new information, just repeating information that's already in the article, or simply being wordier.
• There is plagiarized material. ("Linguistic evidence confirms these origins...")
• Low quality and clearly silly sources are being used uncritically -- how can French toast be named for Joesph [sic] French of 1724 or to 1871 when the OED has a 1660 source?
• General sloppiness: unclosed parentheses, spelling errors "Joesph", copy-paste of formatted text, losing the link "in the Middle Ages [8]", grammatical errors "There also appears [sic!] to be different dates for when the word French toast was first officially [?!] used."
• Wikipedia formatting conventions are not being followed (e.g. put the period before the footnote) -- here, correct formatting was replaced by incorrect
• Loose and unsubstantiated wording, e.g., "For a traditional version of French toast" -- see my essay '"Original", "traditional", "authentic", and other distracting terminology'
• Peculiarly vague and unprofessional wording: "This recipe was utilized for the old-world elite..."
• The unhelpful nutritional information, which I previously deleted, and discussed on the Talk page, was put back in without first discussing on Talk.

Normally, I would just delete the low-quality changes, but I'll leave them in for now and see where this goes. If I don't see improvements soon, I think the best way to proceed would be to create a sandbox page for you to work on, and restore the page to the last good version. --Macrakis (talk) 01:26, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

Why Was The Content of This Article Cut Down?

Hi, my name is Royce and I'm in the group that took French Toast as a school project. I'm new to Wikipedia, and I'm wondering why the French Toast page was cut down so much from this-> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=French_toast&oldid=526280738, to what it is now. Could someone point me in the direction as to why? Thanks. Roycecab (talk) 19:21, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

There appears to have been several issues that were addressed in the recent edit storm:

• The first appears to related to tone, the information was presented in a way that was not neutral. It was written more like a lifestyle article.
• A lot of the content appears to have been original research, that is it was being used to present findings an author had researched themselves.
• Much of the information appears to have been anecdotal, with no supporting sources.
• Some of the data appears to have been outright wrong.

Does this analysis help? --Jeremy (blah blah • I did it!) 19:56, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

I looked over the old version. In terms of Wikipedia policy, the biggest problem with it is that much of the material doesn't have reliable sources. Substantively, a big problem is that it has a long section on variants in various countries presented as though there are distinct and distinctive variants in each country. This may or may not be true (I tend to doubt it and suspect that there is as much variation within countries as between them) and in any case is not well documented. The presentation of the name of the dish in various languages isn't really Wikipedia material either (though it may belong on Wiktionary); it would be more encyclopedic to say that there are families of names, e.g. "French toast", "lost bread", "poor knights" which appear in various languages. --Macrakis (talk) 04:10, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

By the way, some of the existing sources were pretty weak. I removed the Slate article for example, which is breezy and superficial, and replaced with much better references to medieval French and English practice. --Macrakis (talk) 04:10, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the help! We are working on finding some better references for the article! ShannonClare06 (talk) 01:12, 8 October 2013 (UTC)ShannonClare06

On editing

Hello all from Cornell, just a quick note on how and what to add to an article. There is a Good article in a similar vein that you might want to take a look at, Gumbo. This article is considered to be one of the articles on a particular dish on Wikpedia.

So here is what I recommend to you:

• Use the following structure as a guideline:
  • Lead (WP:Lead)
  • Etymology
  • Variations
  • History
  • Preparation and serving
  • Social aspects
  • See also (WP:See also)
  • References (WP:Sources)
  • External links (WP:External links)

I am going to be unavailable until Thursday as I have a paper due Wednesday, so I will only respond lightly. --Jeremy (blah blah • I did it!) 05:58, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

Cornell University class project beginning edits

Hello Wikipedians!

We are looking to re-organize the format of the French Toast page, we want to place the following sections in this order: Etymology, History, Nutrition, Preparation/Serving, Variations, and Social Aspects. To begin, we would like to add the basic nutritional facts set by the USDA. Another part of our class project was to nominate the page to Did You Know, which has been submitted as of October 1st, 2013. We noticed there is only basic background information regarding the National French Toast Day, so we plan on expanding more on this topic. Under the history section, we are going to elaborate on the first known origins of French Toast, dating back to Roman Times. We're going to start with a Roman variation of the meal, since this is where it originated.

This is our starting point, and will add more throughout the week! Laurenjlloyd (talk) 18:09, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for your interest in Wikipedia in general and the French toast article in particular. For prepared dishes like French toast, with a wide variety of recipes and ingredients, I strongly doubt that there is any meaningful nutritional analysis. It may be made with a huge variety of breads, different proportions of milk and eggs, different kinds of milk (skim to full-fat, maybe even cream...), different kinds and amounts of cooking fat (butter, lard, margarine), different temperatures of frying (which will affect how much fat is absorbed) and so on. --Macrakis (talk) 03:17, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for that insight. Yet the USDA does provide nutritional information for a certain preparation of french toast. Do you think that this is sufficient to include? Regardless, do you think that there is any medium by which we can find a true basis for french toast nutrition? I think it could really add to the page as nutrition in food is a big topic in itself. Thanks!Roycecab (talk) 18:55, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

No, I don't think it makes any sense. I am not sure what you mean by a "true basis for french toast nutrition". As I said in my previous comment, recipes vary widely, so the nutritional content will vary accordingly. The USDA page gives the nutritional analysis for a 65g slice of French toast prepared with one particular recipe for French toast. There is no reason to believe that other recipes will have similar nutritional analyses, and certainly no reason to believe that typical slices of French toast weigh 65g. --Macrakis (talk) 23:59, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

I am specifically working with the introduction and the history/etymology. I have found that there are not a ton of scholarly references regarding French toast. Any advice? Also, I was looking to the Wikipedia article Gumbo (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gumbo) for some guidance as it was recommended as a good reference point. ShannonClare06 (talk) 01:16, 8 October 2013 (UTC)ShannonClare06

I see that you changed the article from saying that the earliest attestation of French toast is in the Apicius to claiming that its origins are Roman, which is a huge leap of original research (and in the process removed the wikilink to the Apicius page).

You call French toast a "meal"; it is not a meal, but a dish. A meal is something like lunch or dinner. A dish is something like eggs Benedict or fried fish. A dish is typically a component of meal.

For sources, take a look at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Food_and_drink/Tools/sources. Cornell has excellent libraries -- use them! There is a huge amount of information that is not on the Web.

As for National French Toast Day, perhaps one reason there isn't much background information on it is that it isn't a very notable phenomenon to start with? Is it perhaps a promotion by some particular restaurant or chain? --Macrakis (talk) 04:37, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

Photos

Hello Cornellians. I was wondering if you were aware of Wikipedia Commons? It is a repository of photographs that can be used in Wikipedia articles. If you do a web search for that website and search there for French toast you will see several photos relatede to this subject. Do you think any of them are useful or worth including? Candleabracadabra (talk) 02:25, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

Hello! We will be taking a close look at the photographs on the Wikipedia Commons. Hopefully, some of them will be worth including because we really think that some photographs could make the article better. ShannonClare06 (talk) 01:17, 8 October 2013 (UTC)ShannonClare06

Going along the lines of including pictures, are there standards to this? I can see many pictures that would be nice to include, but I am wondering if only relevant pictures should be included that tie to the text it stands next to. Are there norms to this, or is it more of a case by case basis? Thanks! Roycecab (talk) 19:00, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

Have you looked at the Manual of Style Images section? Basically, images should add some useful information to the article and not be too repetitive. The current number and variety of photos in the article seem to me about right. The main thing that is missing is an example of savory French toast. --Macrakis (talk) 04:37, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

Possible improvements

• Do the opening paragraphs of the article do a good job of summarizing the rest of the contents of the article?
• In the social aspects portion of the article there are a few links to other articles. Are these related to social aspects? Should these be in a different section (See also perhaps?) or maybe integrated into the article in some way? Should they be explained? What are these subjects and what do they have to do with French toast?
• There is a sentence about French toast in Quebec. Is it in an appropriate section of the article?
• There is a long list of toppings. Are all of these used to make french toast? I have never heard of french toast with cooked meat or beans. Who serves it that way? Is it a breakfast dish when prepared that way? Should some explanation be given of savory v. sweet preparations?
• In your research what have you found out about French toast that isn't covered here?

Best of luck with you project. I will be watching and will try to respond where appropriate. Please let me know if I can be of any help. Candleabracadabra (talk) 02:32, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

Course assignment

Hi Cornell folks working on this article. I see that you have been editing the article. Please make sure to be logged in when you are making edits so the teaching staff evaluating your work can attribute the contributions to you and give you credit for them. LeshedInstructor (talk) 13:51, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

Cornell University Project: Thank You

We just would like to thank all the Wikipedia users for being helpful during the course of the project! Technically, the project ends today at 1:25pm. We learned a lot and it has been a wonderful experience being part of this online community.

Sincerely,

Shannon, Lauren and Royce

ShannonClare06 (talk) 13:16, 10 October 2013 (UTC)ShannonClare06