Talk:Tikka (food)

Needs tidying

This page is a mess! I removed two bits of sarcastic discussion from the article, but there is more that is so woven into the article that it is difficult to remove without knowing the subject matter. Please:

- Keep discussion on the discussion page, not in the article!

- This is a disambiguation page - it really needs to be split and the content taken out to seperate pages. Maybe that will solve the "mark on the head"/"food style" issue.

- If you don't know for sure, don't write it! Leave it for somebody else. (The only thing here I am sure of is that sarcastic discussion about what others have written has no place in the article, so that's the only thing I've edited...)

- This page really needs some attention from a native Indian speaker who will also do a bit of research to verify their assumptions. References would be helpful.

- Now, I am back to pondering why an expensive beer made in Belgium is called "Tikka"...

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I don't get the difference between chicken tikka and chicken tandoori. — Gulliver ✉ 10:57, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Nor do I. Does 'tikka' mean a particular flavour or cooking method or both, or does it just mean boneless? Does 'tikka' only refer to chicken, rather than other meat or fish, c.q. seafood? I understand that a marinade is involved. Which marinade, exactly? -- coolbox@hotmail.com

This article has contradictory bits in it.

Rewrote

The article was very confused. It contained many contradictory theories as to the meaning of the word. I took an enormous chance and rewrote on the assumption that whoever explained the difference between soft and hard t was correct (the dot under the letter signifies this difference, yes?) and that the various folk etymologies about shapes were bogus. I removed all the material re tikka of blood, as I can't find any confirmation of this use of the word. I'm not sure what the mark on the parting of the hair is called. If it IS tikka, we can restore that material.

Some who speaks Pashto, Panjabi, Urdu, or Hindi, please comment! Zora 10:00, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Pronunciation

I have re-inserted the factual piece on the pronunciation of the Chicken Tikka dish. Please do not remove this again. It is clear the person who removed it has very little knowledge of the subject area. The Chicken Tikka Dish originated in Glasgow, not India, so I am confused as to how someone who speaks Pashto, Panjabi, Urdu, or Hindi could help. The correct pronunciation is a matter of fact, not of bias, and factual information is the cornerstone on which Wikipedia has been built; for this reason I request the pronunciation be kept on the page.

There is no such thing as a correct pronunciation for anything. Read the article about linguistic prescription. Graham87 15:23, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

I had a quick perusal of your suggested article and henceforth would like to suggest an alteration of the Tikka page. I propose the inclusion of a linguistic prescription for the word 'Tikka', when used in reference to the curry dish created in Glasgow, giving the standardized language usage in terms of pronunciation as 'Tick-ka' rather than 'Teeka'. If you thoroughly read the following articles in their entirity I am sure you will agree this needs to be done: Food,Language, English phonology, Etiquette,United Kingdom, Faux pas, and Glasgow.

It also requires reliable sources to verify those claims - if it is really such a big deal then these sources will show that. Also have a read of the article on the great vowel shift to find out why the vowel sounds have changed. You'll probably find the Glasgow patter article interesting as well. Anyway I don't think it's as big a deal as the different pronunciations of "tomato" as immortalised in the song "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off" by George and Ira Gershwin. Graham87 11:26, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

I am left feeling quite uneasy by your 'I don't think it's as big a deal as...' argument. Should Wikipedia really be a source of information on subjects that individuals think are big deals? You think it is not a big deal, therefore it isn't getting in? Is this how Wikipedians are supposed to operate? When I can find the time I will make effort over the coming weeks to provide reliable sources and I look forward to having this page finally upgraded to a more accurate standard. I have to say, I am quite disappointed by the resistance I have encountered so far and I think there is surely a better way for Wikipedia to be run. My confidence in Wikipedia as an institution has been shaken.

Well if it is important enough to have been mentioned in a local newspaper or on a prominent website (not a blog or community forum), it can be mentioned. If that is not the case, it shouldn't be mentioned. It's as simple as that. Graham87 14:42, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for the clarification there, I will happily produce the required information in the near future, brace yourself...

Hi, my names Lewis and I'm from Scotland. Can I just say - thank God this issue has been brought up because it has been a bugbear of mine for a very long time! In my area, we all pronounce tikka as tick-a, the food in question is a glasgow dish with a very distinct pronunciation that has very little to do with the original Punjabi word. I mean we don't run around calling Paris "Pareee"(sic)or a chicken fillet a "chicken feelay"(sic)- why should this word be any different? There seems to one chap who has a real bee in his bonnet about the importance of this issue, claiming that it is trivial. I disagree. The dish of chicken tick-a is one of Scotlands most succesful and widely enjoyed exports - it is, I believe, a matter of national indignation that this wonderful delicacy should be mispronounced by half of English speaking world, and most irratatingly in particular by those south of the border. It is with no small sense of annoyance that the bastardisation of the word has become the more popular, and it seems strange to me that one individual should have the final say on the inclusion of a matter which he quite clearly knows nothing about. Maybe Graham should spend time on other pursuits - why don't you get out the house, go for a long walk or try stamp collecting or something - surely that's more fun than searching through wikipedia looking for parades you can rain on. I don't mean to get personal, but seriously - who died and made you custodian of the wiki! So keep up the fight - SAY IT RIGHT!!!!!!

I noticed that controversy about its pronunciation was recently added to the chicken tikka masala article where it belongs. While the section there uses weasel words and could do with citations, the article gives some context to the dispute so I won't remove the controversy section - it will be improved by the deadline. The dispute should not be added to the tikka article as it's basically a disambiguation page; however, I'm fine with it being in the chicken tikka masala article. Graham87 01:03, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

I would like to extend my gratitude to Lewis for the help.

Soft vs. hard t

What does "soft t" versus "hard t" mean? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.174.170.150 (talk) 23:52, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

Tidied It Up

I have put them all into different sections, so it is easier to understand The drunken guy (talk) 11:10, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

That's a good idea, and I've done a bit more along those lines. I've removed some of the bullet points, however, as I think they were interrupting the flow. garik (talk) 20:51, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Preferences section

The percentages referred to in the first two sentences do not correspond to the given number of surveyed customers (112, or 896 if it is 112 at each of 8 restaurants). To a mathematician it is clear that 6.86% (2 decimal places) represents 24 people (or an integer multiple of) and 43.14% represents 151 people (or the same integer multiple of). Together these make 50% (175 people) and so the minimum sample size would be 350 (actual sample size could be an integer multiple of 350). Could someone familiar with the source material check the figures? AirdishStraus (talk) 13:08, 26 February 2021 (UTC)

Masala

Most of this article seems to be about Chicken Tikka Masala (with a side of paneer).

Chicken tikka masala is not tikka. Just look at the recipe (for CTM) that has been included in the article: the chicken is simmered in sauce, not cooked in a tandoor, nor roasted in a very hot oven. Proper tikka is cooked dry and hot. The article depicts a skewer, but doesn't mention that to cook meat in a tandoor, you absolutely need a skewer. So we're not told how to make tikka; but we even have a recipe for CTM (that doesn't include anything tikka).

There's already an article about Chicken Tikka Masala. I suggest that all mention of anything masala should be removed from this article, aside from perhaps a "see also" link to the CTM article, and maybe a passing mention of CTM in the lede. The article might then become very light, but at the moment it's padded with stuff about a quite different dish; after stripping it back, relevant material could be added.

Interestingly, at the head of the CTM article is the warning: "Not to be confused with Chicken Tikka". So I further propose that we add a similar warning to this article: "Not to be confused with Chicken Tikka Masala".

There's no mention of Lamb Tikka. If a restaurant offers chicken tikka, it invariably also offers lamb tikka. But there's no such thing as Lamb Tikka Masala; the obsession with masala seems to have driven out the lamb.

Incidentally: WP:NOTAGUIDE says that instructions and recipes are inappropriate in Wikipedia articles.

MrDemeanour (talk) 15:53, 13 June 2021 (UTC)

OK, so I made a bunch of changes: WP:BOLD. My changes are a continous sequence, so if you want to revert the lot, you just go back to the version by User:Widefox.

And my changes didn't overlap; if you want to cherry-pick, it should work.

I'm done for now.

MrDemeanour (talk) 17:11, 13 June 2021 (UTC)

Punjabi or Hindi?

I reverted this change, because the citations were no good.

1. "The original tikka masala" is about Chicken tikka masala. There's a different article for that stuff, which is not a kind of tikka.

2. The Oxford Companion to Food, under "tikka" can't get past it's first sentence, without banging on about tikka masala.

3. Chef Wan is a cooking blog, and not a WP:RS.

4. Translingual Words also seems to be obsessed about tikka masala.

If you search for "tikka hindi" (which is evidently what you did) it's not surprising if you end up with a bunch of links to pages that include both terms.

I'm fed up of people getting all linguo-nationalist about cooking terminology from the subcontinent. Punjabi and Hindi are closely-related languages; if you want to insist that the term "tikka" is Hindi and not Urdu, then it's going to need some deeper etymological research than has been presented in this edit.

Anyway, let's face it: tikka is a dish from Moghul cooking, which makes a Punjabi origin for the word more likely than a Hindi origin. At any rate, Hindi and Urdu are both derived from Hindustani. Both languages have existed since the late 18th C, which is much more recent than the presumed origins of tikka. So perhaps you should instead search for "tikka hindustani", and look for reliable sources that properly explain the origins of the word tikka, rather than confusing it with that red mush invented in Glasgow.

MrDemeanour (talk) 10:10, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

"Chicken tikka" section

This section is based on a single research paper. The abstract of that paper describes the cooking process: "Chicken tikka was prepared using an electric oven at the temperature of 240°C for 20 minutes."

Per the lede, that means they didn't make chicken tikka, because tikka is made in a tandoor.

The paper has 14 citations in Google Scholar; none of those citations confirms the claim that marinating as described results in a reduction of either fat or cholestorol.

I propose to delete this section.

MrDemeanour (talk) 13:03, 5 April 2022 (UTC)