A Typology of Dumplings (2019)

Preface

Sometimes you’re bored on a Friday night. Sometimes you think of data visualization on a Friday night. Sometimes you think of (or, better yet, eat) dumplings on a Friday night. And sometimes, you do all of the above.

Dumplings

I am a fan of dumplings. Bread-type foods are awesome. Filled foods are awesome. Filled bread is awesome (if you’ve never had a Georgian lobiani , you’re missing out!). A dumpling, though not necessarily having to be filled, combines a lot of this. In my world, a dumpling is normally cooked in some liquid though – that is, boiled, simmered, steamed, or deep-fried, rather than, say, baked. We’ll come back to this.

I work as a researcher in linguistics, and I’m interested in comparing different languages. How are they similar and how are they different? Sometimes, I use multidimensional scaling (MDS) as a way of comparing such similarities or differences. Anyway, on this particular Friday night (August 23rd, 2019), I saw a Twitter post mentioning a “dumpling party” (omg, that in itself = love), at which one person had brought Italian arancini , which received “mixed reception” by the other guests. So I started thinking, what defines a “dumpling”, and can you group them based on various features . Turns out Emily Bender et al. had already established a definition of dumpling at their website promoting the International Day of Dumplings – I did not know of this as of this particular Friday night.

At this point, I thought what if I just look up some dumplings on Wikipedia, and code some of the specific features for each one? This could allow me to plot them in two-dimensional space using MDS methods. I was intrigued by the possible outcome, so I started reading through the Wikipedia article “Dumpling” …

Sampling

My method wasn’t very sophisticated. I started by scrolling through the Wikipedia article Dumpling , and basically took each item that had its own article (I may have missed a few), transferred it to a spreadsheet, and started adding some columns for particular features. As I started getting more items, the number of features grew, and I have to be honest, they are far from perfect and just things that I thought of on the spot. A much better analysis could easily be done with a bit more sophistication, time, and systematicity. I mean, this was after all just a random Friday night and I was already past my bed time…

In the end, I collected data from 61 different dumplings. Note that when I say different, this categorization is not at all well-defined. I tried to exclude duplicates for which even the names themselves were cognates . Chinese jiǎozi (餃子) is related to Japanese gyōza (ギョーザ) and thus only the former was included. However, in the case of German Knödel and Czech knedlík , I decided to include both simply based on the fact that whereas the former was listed as potentially being served with a sweet filling, I did not observe this with the latter – NB: I promise this wasn’t a biased decision (see thesection).

Beyond the dumplings sampled according to the above criteria, I also included a few items not traditionally seen as dumplings, because I wanted to see how they patterned with the dumplings proper. These items include calzone , bitterballen , and – of course – arancini . The resulting sample of 61 items can be seen below.

##  [1] "Banku"         "Tihlo"         "American"      "Manti"        
##  [5] "Joshpara"      "Jiaozi"        "Guotie"        "Wonton"       
##  [9] "Gujia"         "Samosa"        "Kozhukkatta"   "Modak"        
## [13] "Kachori"       "Momo"          "Pitha"         "Nevryo"       
## [17] "Siomay"        "Dango"         "Baozi"         "Buuz"         
## [21] "Khuushuur"     "Yomari"        "Empanada"      "Pastei"       
## [25] "Coxinha"       "Pantruca"      "Bunuelo"       "Tamale"       
## [29] "Pastel"        "Paime"         "British"       "Cotswold"     
## [33] "Clootie"       "Kn<U+00F6>del" "Maultasche"    "Halusky"      
## [37] "Shlishkes"     "Knedlik"       "Khinkali"      "Pierogi"      
## [41] "Tortellini"    "Arancini"      "Bitterbal"     "Kreplach"     
## [45] "Pelmeni"       "Kluski"        "Kalduny"       "Cepelinai"    
## [49] "Borek"         "Ravioli"       "Gnocchi"       "Calzone"      
## [53] "Pastizz"       "Kroppkaka"     "Palt"          "Asida"        
## [57] "Qatayef"       "Kibbeh"        "Mataz"         "MatzahBall"   
## [61] "Knish"

Conclusion

Seems I’m not the only one loving data and dumplings. Perhaps dump ling uistics should indeed be a future subfield in academia. Make dumplings, not war. Keep calm and eat dumplings. All of them.

Bonus

As a tiny bonus, I’ll share my top-5 dumpling dishes (promise, only true dumplings), although several I no longer eat as I am (currently) vegetarian

1. Bramborové knedlíky s uzeným masem
2. Pelmeni (пельмени) (with sourcream/butter)
3. Khinkali (ხინკალი) (pork, lamb, or potato)
4. Jiǎozi (餃子) (anything with cabbage!)
5. Halušky (cheeeeeeesy)