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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Reinhearted (talk | contribs) at 19:33, 17 January 2021. The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.


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Etymology of the Word: Hummus

Hello everyone,

Please help me post this information correctly (regrettably, I have NO time to learn how to do so).

The origin of the word borrowed for/ascribed to the chickpeas or garbanzo beans is by way of their preparation (when soaked in water overnight to soften with salt, a process which turns them "SOUR"!). The adjective word in Arabic for sour is: HAmuth (حامض). The SAME adjective word is used in Arabic's twin sister, Hebrew, where it used to be pronounced in the very SAME manner but modern Hebrew pronounced it as: HAmuts. a related Hebrew word is the HAmets (the LEAVENED substance-which, during the Jewish Passover Holiday, tradition requires meticulous burning thereof in each & e very Jewish household & the consumption of ONLY unleavened substance (i.e. bread, with the Passover unleavened bread version of which is Matsah [ding.] or Matsot [pl.]/Matzos-in Ashkenazi Hebrew spelling/pronunciation)commanded as the ONLY bread allowed for sonsumption during the 7 days of the observance of Passover to commemorate the exodus of the Israelites from the land of Egypt from bondage/slavery to freedom in a hurry, during which they had NO time to wait for the bread dough to rise-or, to leaven...

AK63 (talk) 09:35, 5 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

None of the reliable sources I can find agree with this etymology. Without that, it can't be included in the article, sorry. --IamNotU (talk) 15:23, 5 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Just coming back to this, I did find some evidence of possible roots of the Arabic word in the words for "sour" or "fermented" in Aramaic. I'll see if it can be added. However, I don't see evidence that the fact that Hebrew has a similar word for "sour", possibly from the same root, or any of the information about bread, chametz, etc., is relevant to the hummus article, sorry. --IamNotU (talk) 12:15, 17 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I'll be interested to see what you find. But the ultimate etymology of hummus isn't really relevant. Here it is used to mean 'chickpeas', nothing more, nothing less, as far as I can tell. --Macrakis (talk) 14:38, 17 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Semi-protected edit request on 25 June 2020

Hummus was originally created in lebanon! 141.138.185.29 (talk) 10:31, 25 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

 Not done: please provide reliable sources that support the change you want to be made. Jack Frost (talk) 11:40, 25 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Merge proposal

A duplicate template over on Hummus tehina has prompted me to suggest that that article might be better placed in the Regional preparations section here, given that the section already contains significant similar content (related to preparation in Israel). So, merge on the grounds of duplication of scope? Klbrain (talk) 21:53, 19 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

  • Support. "Hummus tehina" isn't a widely-known dish. It's only the name of one particular recipe for basic hummus, from chef Michael Solomonov's cookbook, served in his Israeli restaurant in Philadelphia, which received some media attention. The phrase is not commonly used in Israel, where it's just "חומוס" - "hummus". I don't think we need a separate article for individual hummus recipes, even if they are well-known. Nor do we need separate articles about Syrian-style hummus, Palestinian-style hummus, Lebanese-style hummus, etc., as they are all essentially the same thing. I put a citation of the Solomonov book in this article, the other two citations are just to basically standard hummus recipes. I don't see anything else in the article worth keeping. The statements in the lead sentence are not verified in the source and the "Preparation" section is again just a standard description of hummus. I think the article should just be deleted. --IamNotU (talk) 23:19, 19 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Agree completely. There is nothing particularly distinctive about Hummus tehina. For that matter, when are we going to merge in Israeli style hummus? It is mostly about promoting variants served in particular restaurants and is very poorly sourced. Though it has 110 footnotes, almost all of them are about individual restaurants, and the "Popularity in other countries" section is completely bogus. The only sources which even use the term "Israeli style hummus" are about Solomonoff's restaurant. It lists restaurants world-wide which serve hummus, but in no cases (except Solomonoff) is it identified as specifically "Israeli hummus". See Talk:Israeli style hummus.
That is, the article is a WP:POVFORK. --Macrakis (talk) 14:50, 20 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I went ahead with a WP:BLANKANDREDIRECT. I didn't see any content worth keeping, and there were problems with WP:NPOV. As I noted above, "hummus tehina" isn't a "regional preparation", it's only the name of a recipe in an American cookbook that got good reviews. I could find no evidence of the term being used in Israel; if it is, it's only the Hebrew spelling of the Arabic "hummus bi-tahina", which in English is just "hummus". Hummus made in Israel is just hummus. --IamNotU (talk) 23:24, 12 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

What's the meaning of this?

Can someone check this out: why is there two more wiki entries about hummus here? Hummus tehina, Israeli style hummus I don't see any reason for these entries other than to make the food israeli more than it is Arab/Levantine food. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.180.23.172 (talk) 18:16, 12 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Hummus tehina is addressed above, I've now redirected it to this article. Israeli style hummus may be more complicated, see the comment above and the discussion at Talk:Israeli style hummus. --IamNotU (talk) 00:14, 13 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
hmmm... what's next? Israeli style sushi? American style sushi? where is this BS going? These two pages should be deleted. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.180.23.172 (talk) 09:12, 13 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Israeli style hummus is not complicated. There is one chef who uses "Israeli style hummus" (ISH) in his cookbook and his restaurant. None of the other restaurants in the article list ISH on their menus; in fact, some of them don't have hummus on their menus at all!
The various variants of ISH are either individual restaurants' creations, or they parallel standard Levantine hummus variants.
The article tries unsuccessfully to define ISH as a particularly smooth hummus, but then many of the variants are not smooth.
It is a pure nationalist WP:POV fork. The editor who's written most of the ISH article has also created other nationalist POV forks like Limonana (now merged into Mint lemonade). He also wrote the Shirin polo article as though it was a uniquely Persian Jewish dish, when in fact it is a standard Persian dish which is also popular among Persian Jews (see my edits with RS). --Macrakis (talk) 14:00, 13 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I was actually just about to write something very similar on the other talk page, but ended up working on correcting the false statements in the laffa article instead. I completely agree. The question is what to do about it. Can/should we just delete the whole thing? Or do we need to go through it to preserve any valid, sourced content and merge it here or to other articles? Is there actually any valid, sourced content? I've been meaning to help deal with it, but have been putting it off because the article is very long and it irks me just to read it, as does much of the other writing of that editor. --IamNotU (talk) 15:16, 13 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I will start by re-deleting the list of restaurants, which is completely bogus, as I've already said on that Talk page.... Then maybe you can remove other content that is clearly wrong or redundant, and we can go from there. I suspect we'll end up whittling it down to very little that needs to be merged in with other articles. --Macrakis (talk) 16:18, 13 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with ip79 and Macrakis, the "Israeli style hummus" article is a hoax article and must be deleted.--Supreme Deliciousness (talk) 17:04, 13 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I continue to whittle down Israeli style hummus. Besides being full of OR and SYNTH, it also has huge amounts of non-notable content (a variant served at one restaurant). And even leaving aside the content, the style is atrocious, with 10 words being used where 1 would do and multiple repetitions of the same thing over and over. --Macrakis (talk) 23:02, 14 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Kill it with fire, nuke it from orbit, and salt the ground it stood upon. That's a pointless mess of poorly written trash that shouldn't be taking up space on our servers. --Khajidha (talk) 14:28, 16 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Reading its sources closely, it is clear that there is only one chef that makes "Israeli style hummus". Everything else in that article was about varieties of hummus in Israel, none of which are called "Israeli style hummus" by any reliable sources. I have edited the article accordingly. At this point, it seems to me that the article can be deleted based simply on non-notability. We don't normally report on one chef's creations unless they're widely taken up by others. --Macrakis (talk) 16:14, 16 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
What remains on the page (assuming it is worth having at all) should be moved to the page about the chef in question. --Khajidha (talk) 11:24, 17 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Supreme Deliciousness, Khajidha, and IamNotU: Good idea! I have created a merge discussion on Solomonov's page and I hope you'll all contribute to it. --Macrakis (talk) 19:35, 19 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for working on this. I left a comment in the merge discussion. I don't think "Israeli style hummus" should be redirected there though. Solomonov's hummus recipe is not actually named "Israeli-style hummus" in his book or restaurant, nor the New York Times article, but "hummus tehina" (which currently redirects here). It was only described that way by Bon Appétit when it reprinted the recipe. For that reason, I can't really agree with this edit: [1] that changes the subject to focus only on Solomonov. Also, there are in fact some reliable sources that use the phrase "Israeli-style hummus" unrelated to Solomonov, to refer to hummus as prepared in restaurants in Israel, and/or recipes meant to emulate that. However, unlike sources that may be biased even though they are considered reliable, Wikipedia articles must follow the WP:NPOV policy, which the "Israeli style hummus" article fails to do – all the way down to the title. We can't describe the hummus in Israel (with a higher proportion of tahini than some other regions being the only property consistently mentioned) as being "Israeli hummus" or "Israeli-style hummus", when other reliable sources contradict this, referring to it for example as "Palestinian-style hummus"[1] or being essentially the same as the hummus typical of southern Lebanon.[2] The article should be deleted at AfD on the general principle that just because a dish is popular in a certain country, it doesn't follow that it originates from or exclusively belongs to that country, and that content or article names suggesting it does - often based on a nationalist point of view - are against policy. It would be good to clarify this, because the same principle should be applied to other articles by the same editor, such as Israeli pita. --IamNotU (talk) 16:23, 20 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

References

  1. ^ "Chef Michael Solomonov's Ultimate Israeli Soul Food Guide to Jerusalem". Departures. Retrieved 2020-09-17.
  2. ^ Abood, Maureen (8 September 2015). "What most people get wrong about making hummus". Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved 2020-09-17 – via www.washingtonpost.com.

The 'External links' tab should be moved

In my opinion, the 'External links' tab within the article should be moved to the very bottom of the article as in its current position it is inconsistent with other Wikipedia articles in my opinion. Xboxsponge15 (talk) 00:43, 16 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Nicely spotted, thanks; moved external links section below references, consistent with MOS:LAYOUT. Just plain Bill (talk) 01:36, 16 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Why is olive oil not listed as one of the "basic" ingredients?...

I was surprised to see that olive oil wasn't listed in the intro and in the text body as one of the "basic ingredients" of hummus...

While some of the cheaper industrial hummus preparations might use canola or other cheaper oils as a substitute, I'm pretty sure one would be hard pressed to find a traditional hummus recipe that didn't include olive oil.

It's certainly at least as common as lemon juice, and indeed some of the cheaper industrial hummuses are made with cheaper substitutes like citric acid (produced industrially from corn). So if that's the basis of excluding olive oil then lemon juice should be left out too.

I also worked years ago at a cafe where their hummus recipe didn't include tahini, and I'm sure there are others made without garlic too. But if the standard is what's traditionally included in all hummus recipes (not what a cheap cafe or factory might exclude or substitute to cut costs), then chickpeas, tahini, olive oil, lemon juice, and garlic are the five basic ingredients. These (including) olive oil are also listed in most of the foreign language Wikipedia articles. -2003:CA:871E:3681:55E2:1B0D:61D2:165F (talk) 13:21, 16 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The reason is because that's what the expert sources say, and your statement that it's "traditionally included in all hummus recipes" is easily disproven. Not only the cited Oxford Companion to Food: "a ubuquitous paste of chickpea and tahini (sesame paste) with garlic and lemon", but others like Gil Marks: "Hummus primarily consists of four basic ingredients - cooked chickpeas, tahini (sesame seed paste), lemon juice, and garlic." Along with parsely or various other toppings, olive oil is generally drizzled over it as a garnish for serving, but is not standardly mixed in, so not considered a main ingredient. What other-language Wikipedia articles say isn't relevant; all we do here is summarize what reliable, published sources say. However, for example the Arabic Wikipedia says (translated): "Its main ingredients - chickpeas, sesame, lemon, and garlic - have been combined and eaten in the Levant for centuries", and it describes its preparation as not having oil mixed in, but only served on top as a garnish. A web search will turn up some recipes with oil mixed in, but again it's not standard - see e.g. the Washington Post [2], or this traditional recipe from Arto Der Haroutunian's book "Middle Eastern Cookery": [3], or many others. If you can provide high-quality published sources (i.e., not recipe blogs) stating that it's common to mix olive oil in as a main ingredient, it's possible that it could be mentioned somewhere in the article as a variation. --IamNotU (talk) 15:34, 16 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@IamNotU - I don't know that I'd consider a recipe posted on WaPo to be particularly authoritative. And as for the Arabic Wikipedia, what you posted there looks like a word-for-word translation of what's in the English article here. I can do some more searching when I get more time, but here are several encyclopedia and dictionary entries:
Britannica:
"Hummus (or hummous)—chickpeas mashed to a paste with lemon juice, olive oil, and tahini (sesame paste)—is widely eaten in the Middle East as a sauce and dip for bread." [4]
Lexico:
"A thick paste or spread made from ground chickpeas and sesame seeds, olive oil, lemon, and garlic, made originally in the Middle East." [5]
Dictionary.com:
"a paste or dip made of chickpeas mashed with oil, garlic, lemon juice, and tahini and usually eaten with pita." [6]
Cambridge Dictionary:
"a soft, smooth food made from crushed chickpeas, oil, and lemon juice" [7]
The Free Dictionary:
"A smooth thick mixture of mashed chickpeas, tahini, oil, lemon juice, and garlic, used especially as a dip for pita." [8]
These all include either "olive oil" or "oil" (which would traditionally be olive oil in the Middle East). ::-2003:CA:871E:367B:C9B6:52CB:66D8:FAB8 (talk) 01:47, 17 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
From PubMed:
"Traditional hummus is a nutrient-dense dip or spread made from cooked, mashed chickpeas, blended with tahini, olive oil, lemon juice, and spices." [9]
Another source, from the World Policy Journal, found from Google Scholar:
"In Israel, hummus—cooked chickpeas puréed with olive oil, lemon juice, sesame, salt, and garlic—is widely portrayed as a national dish, and the hummus industry is a serious business." [10]
I'm sure that more can be found, but I think these so far, all from reputable sources, should be sufficient to establish that olive oil is a basic ingredient of hummus. -2003:CA:871E:367B:C9B6:52CB:66D8:FAB8 (talk) 02:06, 17 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I don't claim that the Washington Post reference is authoritative for the ingredients of hummus, but by the same measure, dictionaries are no better. Rather, it's just another example showing that not all (or even most) published recipes include olive oil as a mixed-in ingredient. On the other hand, I do consider the Oxford Companion to Food to be generally authoritative. And why do you ignore Arto Der Haroutunian's book? There may be some ambiguity - it is quite commonly served with a topping of olive oil, so arguably that could be described as an "ingredient" by some of the sources you've listed. But on Wikipedia, we usually list as main ingredients only those things that are defining characteristics. For example, if you wish to use the World Policy Journal as proof that all hummus in Israel contains olive oil, you'll need to deal not only with Gil Marks, who I also consider authoritative and who expressly says there are only four basic ingredients, but with Michael Solomonov, whose hummus was selected as "recipe of the year" 2015 by Bon Appetit ([11]), and which contains not a single drop of olive oil.
So, while I'm not strictly opposed to a mention somewhere in the article that some recipes call for oil to be mixed in with the other standard ingredients, I don't agree with stating that it is a fundamental ingredient that is always included, given the very strong sources that say otherwise. (PS, I formatted your reply for the talk page, please see WP:INDENT, thanks.) --IamNotU (talk) 04:33, 17 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I wasn't familiar with Arto Der Haroutunian. Looked at his entry now, and it says that he's an Armenian who grew up in Syria. I'd be willing to concede that my initial comment here was perhaps a bit too sweeping and hyperbolic, and that one can find some more traditional recipes that don't include olive oil in the initial mix (just as one could find some which exclude garlic, etc.), but I would still maintain that it's usually included as a main ingredient.

Over the years, I've spent time with dozens of people from both Israel and Palestine, Syria, Jordan, and other Arab countries who've discussed with me how they make hummus, and they all mixed olive oil in with the chickpeas, and then typically also added additional olive oil on top...Of course this is anecdotal, so we can't cite it as a source or anything, but I'm just explaining where I'm coming from, and why I found the lack of olive oil as a basic ingredient so baffling!

As far as the actual sources go, here's a recipe that I found from Claudia Roden, an Egyptian-British cultural anthropologist and cookbook writer:

"Ingredients

250g chickpeas, soaked in cold water overnight 2 lemons, juice of 3 tablespoons tahini 3 garlic cloves, crushed salt 4 tablespoons olive oil

Garnish

1 tablespoon olive oil 1 teaspoon paprika 1 teaspoon ground cumin 2 sprigs parsley, finely chopped

Directions

Drain the chickpeas and simmer in fresh water for about an hour or until tender. Reserve the cooking water.

Process the chickpeas in a blender (or food processor) with the lemon juice, tahina, garlic, olive oil, salt and enough of the cooking liquid to obtain a soft creamy consistency.

Serve on a flat plate, garnished with a dribble of olive oil, a dusting of paprika and ground cumin (this is usually done in the shape of a cross) and a little parsley.

Serve with warm pita bread for dipping." [12]

I would actually argue though that dictionaries, and certainly encyclopedias like Britannica, are better sources than individual recipes, even recipes from famous chefs or writers, because they're more representative of broader customs, and what's generally understood to be included as ingredients.

Also, even the recipes that don't call for the oil to be blended directly with the chickpeas during preparation, they almost all still call for it to be poured on top afterwards, and generally over relatively small portions, such that it would get mixed pretty thoroughly while it's eaten. So it's arguably still an ingredient in such cases.

Perhaps, as a compromise, the intro might read something along the lines of: "Hummus is a dip, spread, or savory dish made from cooked, mashed chickpeas blended with tahini, lemon juice, and garlic. Olive oil is usually included as well, as part of the initial blend and/or as garnish on top." -2003:CA:871E:367B:C9B6:52CB:66D8:FAB8 (talk) 15:20, 17 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The statement is still too sweeping. The sources you've provided show only that olive oil is sometimes an ingredient, but not always or even usually, and the latter is directly contradicted by a number of very high-quality sources. We can't use a dictionary entry to simply dismiss the Oxford Companion or Marks' encyclopedia entries (neither of which are "individual recipes"). Nor should we ignore other reliable sources such as this one that says the hummus typical of Southern Lebanon, Israel, and Palestine does not contain olive oil as an ingredient: [13]. Even looking at dictionaries, only one of the citations you gave specifies olive oil, the others just say "oil". You argue this "would traditionally be olive oil", but this article is not about "traditional" hummus, rather hummus in general. Most hummus is industrially produced and rarely contains olive oil; it either has no oil [14], [15], or as you said, a cheaper oil like sunflower or rapeseed: [16], [17], [18]. And while it's traditionally served with olive oil drizzled on top, at least in the West it's more likely to just be eaten out of the tub from the supermarket. If I had to guess, I'd say that the majority of hummus consumed globally doesn't involve any olive oil at all. Furthermore, the most authoritative English dictionary, the OED, doesn't include olive oil in its definition: "In Middle Eastern countries (and also, more recently, elsewhere) an hors d'œuvre made from ground chick-peas and sesame oil flavoured with lemon and garlic." I understand that many people like to blend olive oil into their hummus, and this could be mentioned, but the sources don't support that it's without question the accepted standard or even traditional method of preparation. --IamNotU (talk) 00:10, 18 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Unreliable sources removed

The following citations added by Reinhearted in this edit: [19] have been removed, please do not continue to re-add them:

  • <ref>{{Cite web|title={{!}} History of Hummus|url=https://ayblagrill.com/history-of-hummus/|access-date=2021-01-17|language=en-US}}</ref>
    • The source clearly plagiarizes text from this article (I know because I wrote some of it). See WP:CIRCULAR.
  • <ref>{{Cite web|url=https://maninio.com/the-original-arabic-hummus/|access-date=2021-01-17|website=maninio.com}}</ref>
    • The source is a self-published blog. Penelopi from Greece looks like a nice person, but she's not a recognized expert, so her blog is not a reliable source.
  • <ref>{{Cite web|title=Hummus: Greek or Middle Eastern?|url=https://www.thespruceeats.com/is-hummus-greek-or-middle-eastern-2355742|access-date=2021-01-17|website=The Spruce Eats|language=en}}</ref>
    • The Spruce is a Dotdash (formerly About.com) website, see WP:RSP#Dotdash. It is of low quality, and should not be cited if there's a better alternative, which there is, already in the article.

Regarding the text added repeatedly: [20], [21], [22], [23], as noted multiple times, it's redundant. It leaves a broken, duplicated, half-sentence. It's changing the existing sentence:

  • The word hummus comes from Arabic: حُمُّص‎‎, romanized: ḥummuṣ, meaning 'chickpeas'.

to:

  • The word hummus comes from the Arabic word meaning chickpeas. Arabic: حُمُّص‎‎, romanized: ḥummuṣ, 'chickpeas'.

Please stop. --IamNotU (talk) 19:30, 17 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Both sentences state the same exact thing, you make it seem as if the article didn’t say the the same exact thing before you edited it. The second sentence doesn’t make much sense and is grammatically incorrect you put a language translation in the same sentence? Even without sources added, the statement still stands in the article and all I did was ass better wording. I refuse to go back and fourth with you, next time you reverse one of my edits I will be firmly contacting an administrator. Reinhearted (talk) 19:33, 17 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
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