Talk:Tzatziki

Definition

The first sentence reads:

"Tzatziki is a Greek appetizer, also used as a sauce for gyros or doner kebabs"

Wrong. It's not an appetizer. It's a sauce. I'm changing the first sentence to reflect this. Also, I'm deleting this sentence:

"While in Greece and Turkey the dish is usually served as an accompaniment, in other places tzatziki is often served with bread (loaf or pita) as part of the first course of a meal[citation needed]."

Wrong. Tatziki is meant to accompany grilled meats, not bread. I'm deleting this bullshit sentence. Also, this article is about Greek tzatziki. If there's a similar Turkish sauce, then that should be mentioned in the "variations" section of the article, not at the beginning. Skyduster (talk) 17:22, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

Spelling Variations of Yogurt/Yoghurt

As a new-ish wikipedian, I am not familiar with the rule here. Can someone tell me about spelling variations within the same article? Shouldn't a single spelling be used throughout? Who Is Christopher? (talk) 21:00, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Its probably better that people express themselves, then the mistakes can always be edited, if you find the spellings strange, then edit them!Hotspury (talk) 10:01, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Picture

The photograph of the article is not indicative of tzatziki; it depicts the Turkish soup-like cacik, which differs from tzatziki as it is far more diluted and cannot be used as a condiment. I'm going to remove the picture and replace with one of tzatziki later on today. Eikonografos 23:06, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

>1 ½ cup of Greek yoghurt (strained).......

Instead of cups I suggest to use a fixed parameter, like millilitre or gram. I guess I am not the only one who has cups of various sizes at home.

The recipe means the cup unit of measurement (which typically is a fixed size for a given region), not just any random drinking vessel. — Xaonon (Talk) 19:33, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Wise words

"For a for a more garlicky tase, add more garlic."

Couldn't of said it any better myself.

GSMalette 22:58, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

-I was just coming here to add that myself.. damn you for beating me to the punch!

What is...

what is greek yoghurt?

there is nothing particularly greek about greek yoghurt, it just means thick yoghurt as it has been strained to some degree. it is probably called greek yoghurt because they are the bulk of immigrants in the US and the UK that brought yoghurt with them. this type of yoghurt is eaten wherever yoghurt is traditionaly made —Preceding unsigned comment added by Hotspury (talk • contribs) 16:21, 2 May 2008 (UTC) It is also important to know, that in tzaziki sauce, we put a lot of garlic... so be careful!

Notes on Commercial Tzatziki in USA and Greek yogurt

I personally experienced that heavy sour cream and complex additives rather than yogurt were included in a half-gallon container, sold for restaurant use. The taste is too rich and oily for hot summers when it has to accompany fried peppers, eggplants, potatoes, all oily on the dish. Very surprized. "Greek" yogurt as explained in talk section as strained yogurt is called bag-yogurt or 'torba yogurdu', a staple of weekly produce markets in Ankara and East of it where various locals and turks compared culinary notes in peace for about a thousand years. 67.86.58.205 (talk) 05:59, 23 June 2008 (UTC)Wikici

Edits needed

I think the spelling tzaziki should link to this tzatziki article, as well as other common mispellings (transliterations?). Is there a policy for linking mispellings to the correct article, especially in a case of foreign word origin? I'm sure I'm not the only one who spells it wrong.

Also, I believe the only cited content in the article is incorrect. The encarta online dictionary link says:

"tzat·zi·ki Greek dip: a dip of Greek origin made from yogurt, chopped cucumber, mint, and garlic [Mid-20th century. Via modern Greek tsatsiki< Turkish cacik]"

So it's not suggesting the greek word is derived from the Turkish term. It's saying the Turkish term for Tzatziki is cacik. Right? (ChocoCereal (talk) 22:40, 29 October 2008 (UTC))

The Greek word τζατζίκι definitely comes from the Turkish word cacık. The c in Turkish orthography represents the j sound of English. Greek possesses no native j sound but represents this sound in loan words with τζ (cf. τζαζ for jazz, τζετ for jet, τζην for jeans, etc.). Among the Greek words including τζ for j are a number of Turkish loan words. The admittedly confusing Encarta etymology actually means that the English tzatziki comes from the Modern Greek tzatziki which in turn comes from the Turkish cacık. Aramgar (talk) 23:40, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

• Hi, ChocoCereal. The type of linking you are talking about is called a redirect on Wikipedia, and you can learn all about them at WP:REDIRECT. Hope that helps, Kafka Liz (talk) 23:49, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks to both of you for your answers. I will investigate the article on redirects.

I couldn't find any sources supporting a Turkish origin for the word Tzatziki, but I accept your detailed explanation as well as your understanding of the Encarta entry. I wasn't sure what the greater-than sign meant. Your knowledge on the subject is impressive. Clearly the two words are closely related and I think the articles could better reflect this. Maybe it will bring people together, or perhaps it will provide one more source for feuding.

Anyway, I think it's interesting, and probably not surprising, that the two countries and cultures have such a similar word for a food that's common (though not identical as I understand it) to both.(ChocoCereal (talk) 00:01, 30 October 2008 (UTC))

"During preparation, the yogurt (Bulgarian: кисело мляко, Macedonian: кисело млеко, Serbian: кисело млеко) is hung for several hours in a kerchief and loses about half of its water (drained yogurt, Bulgarian: цедено кисело мляко, Serbian: цеђено кисело млеко, Macedonian: цедено кисело млеко)." ==> yogurt and sour milk (кисело млеко) are two completely different things, they are made differently and taste differently. someone should repair this, it's confusing. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.139.63.174 (talk) 14:50, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

Your next challenge

What does (cf. tarator) mean? I think it should be written out whatever it is.

The other part of this article I find confusing is the bit about ttalattouri and then later it talks about cacık as a chutney.

I'm more familiar with Indian chutney, so this seems very confusing to me, and even more so because the Turkish cacik seems very similar to the greek tzatziki (which are also closely related linguistically). So I'm not clear on what this other ttalattouri is.

Can you help me understand and maybe we can fix it better in the article so it makes more sense? What do you think?(ChocoCereal (talk) 00:18, 30 October 2008 (UTC))

cf. is an abbreviation for the Latin confer, meaning compare. Sorry for a drive-by reply -- I'm off-wiki for the rest of the evening, but I'd be happy to help where I can. I haven't read the entire article yet, but I'm certain we can clean it up a bit if it's unclear or not making sense. Kafka Liz (talk) 00:31, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

I think it's comparing the word "ttalattouri" with "tarator", since they seem similar phonologically. Those words, along with "tzatziki" and "cacık", refer to regional variations of what is essentially the same dish. BalkanFever 04:06, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

I would think "tarator" is "Tartar sauce".AverageTurkishJoe (talk) 13:44, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

"Tarator" in Bulgaria is a cold soup; not a sauce. There are some similarities with tzatziki, but I would not call it a variant; not even a similar food. "Slezanka" is much closer to tzatziki than tarator.--Yannismarou (talk) 14:06, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

Anglicized pronunciation

An Anglicized pronunciation of this word is given as /zɑːdˈziːki/ (zahd-ZEEK-ee) which seems wrong in so many ways. I've only ever heard tzatziki pronounced in English as /təˈziːki/ (tuh-ZEEK-ee). I checked the OED which gives the even more ludicrous pronunciation /tsætˈsɪki/ (tsat-SIK-ee) despite the fact that [ts] is not permitted at the beginning of a word in English (i.e. tsar, tsunami...). I'm assuming this is more prescriptive than descriptive.

Assuming the pronunciation is Anglicized via regular patterns, we would expect /sætˈsɪki/ (sat-SIK-ee) or possibly /zædˈzɪki/ (zad-ZIK-ee) or alternatively stress placed on the first syllable or swap either syllable for one in the other transcription. The sound in the first syllable of the transcription on the page [ɑː] (as in father) is not readily explainable via spelling and seems to clash with the English interpretation of spelling.

I am curious if my pronunciation /təˈziːki/ (tuh-ZEEK-ee) is a localized phenomenon or if others pronounce it the same way. How do other native English speakers pronounce this word? What should the proper Anglicized pronunciation on this page be? -Devin (d.s.ronis) (talk) 12:13, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

As a native American English speaker, I’ve always heard and said it as tsat-SEEK-ee; it’s possible that I’ve mainly heard the word spoken by Greek immigrants. The OED pronounciation does sound British to me, albeit no more ludicrous than the rest of the bizarre jibber-jabber spoken on that island. The supposed proscription on ts- words in English doesn’t cut any ice, as you note with tsar and tsunami. El Mariachi (talk) 13:26, 31 May 2015 (UTC)

Spellings

An editor has been adding various variant spellings to the lead, including 'jajiki', 'dzadziki', etc. But I have found no evidence that these spellings are common anywhere. Take a look at the Google ngrams for some of the variants. Remember, WP policy is not to include all possible spellings, but only the common or notable ones. --Macrakis (talk) 20:08, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

Tzatziki image

The image used for Tzatziki in the main frame is way off the traditional Tzatziki recipe produced in Greece. I dont have a clue what is the reddish herb sprinkled over it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Vagr7 (talk • contribs) 09:58, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

Yogurt and Tzatziki

Cacik's main ingredient yogurt is a genuine Turkish/Turkic food, it comes from Turkish word ""yoğurt"" . So so called Greek yogurt and Tzatziki are not Greek they are of Turkish/Turkic origin. So This article needs an overhaul.--Prusan (talk) 14:58, 21 July 2015 (UTC)

The origin of a dish can be completely different from the origin of any one of its ingredients. Largoplazo (talk) 22:11, 30 July 2016 (UTC)

Proposed merge with Cacık

Tzatziki and cacık are fundamentally the same dish, and they are virtually the same word, with the former being the romanization of the Greek spelling and the latter being the Turkish spelling of which the Greek form is an adaptation. The bulk of both articles consists of a list of variations of the respective dishes, and those lists cover almost exactly the same ground. The list in the tzatziki article even gives the list in the cacık article as its "main article". Largoplazo (talk) 16:37, 21 May 2016 (UTC)

• Support Xtremedood (talk) 20:51, 26 June 2016 (UTC)
• Support — Eru·tuon 05:31, 6 August 2016 (UTC)
• Support Although Greek tzatziki is normally thick, and Turkish cacık is normally thin, they are fundamentally the same thing, and should be covered together. All to often on Wikipedia we have multiple articles on essentially the same thing, divided by country. That isn't the way WP is supposed to work. --Macrakis (talk) 21:50, 6 August 2016 (UTC)
• Support i completely agree and was about to suggest the same - there is no substantial difference between the two and the Greek clearly derives from the Turkish in the Ottoman era. Merge please Truth regards not who is the speaker, nor in what manner it is spoken, but that the thing be true; and she does not despise the jewel which she has rescued from the mud, but adds it to her former treasures 19:10, 10 August 2016 (UTC)
• Support Of course it's the same thing. It's even the same word. --92slim (talk) 01:10, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

Tzatziki may be Greek or Turkish

Shingling334 is still changing the information from Greek to Turkish without any sources. Tzatziki may come from the Greek Cypriot administration and not the Turkish Cypriot one. Eyesnore 21:37, 30 July 2016 (UTC)

(even though the origin of this term comes from the Turkish language) Eyesnore 21:39, 30 July 2016 (UTC)

Why don't we just remove the claim as to the origin until we have a source indicating what the origin is? In connection with that, may I direct your attention to the previous section on this Talk page, #Proposed merge with Cacık? Largoplazo (talk) 22:09, 30 July 2016 (UTC)

What does a food or a food name have to do with "administration", Greek or Turkish? --Macrakis (talk) 21:50, 6 August 2016 (UTC)

i completely agree and was about to suggest the same - there is no substantial difference between the two and the Greek clearly derives from the Turkish in the Ottoman era. Merge please Truth regards not who is the speaker, nor in what manner it is spoken, but that the thing be true; and she does not despise the jewel which she has rescued from the mud, but adds it to her former treasures 19:10, 10 August 2016 (UTC)

Proposed merge with Tarator

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

Merged according to an apparent consensus below. No such user (talk) 12:27, 9 October 2018 (UTC)

---

This is the same thing as Tzatziki - Tzatziki is the most recognizable name in English Seraphim System ^(talk) 23:57, 7 April 2018 (UTC)

• Agree with merge. I'm Bulgarian and have lived in England for many years and can safely so that nobody really knows our tarator and this includes people who have been on holiday to Bulgaria. Tzatziki is well-known and really is not anything different. Sometimes Greeks will try to claim it has different types of ingredients so as to localise the dish but in the end of the day, there is no "correct" way to make tarator or taztziki. And if everything really were different, you'd have cacık, tarator and tzatziki as separate items in all countries of the Balkans. I know in some Bulgarian restaurants (especially on Black Sea) they like to serve tarator and tzatziki with variant ingredients as individual items but locals all know this is just for impressive effect and to appeal to tourists who know Greece. --Edin Balgarin (talk) 09:38, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

PS. Likewise do we really need Ciorbă in addition to Chorba? I personally think not. --Edin Balgarin (talk) 09:45, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

• Support the merge. There's a great deal of overlap in scope. --Ptko (talk) 11:08, 19 July 2018 (UTC)
• Somewhat disagree with the merge proposal. While I do agree that these dishes are similar, it should be clearly noted that Tzatziki is just another variation of the yogurt soup. Most countries on the Balkans (excluding Greece) use the word Tarator, and although that it may be somehow more popular with the name Tzatziki in Western Europe, this does not justify the merge. Statistically (if we exclude a few West European nations) it is likely that the wider population in Europe who is mostly consuming this appetizer does not use the word Tzatziki.

The Tarator article is mostly unsourced anyway. There's no prejudice to recreating if there is sufficient sourced content to justify a stand alone article, but that doesn't seem to be the case for now. A move proposal based on a common name argument would be a separate matter, but common name usually depends on usage in the English language.Seraphim System ^(talk) 19:31, 5 August 2018 (UTC)

• Support merge. With those food articles, it's always difficult to determine the most appropriate title, but it's often obvious that the dishes, under various names, are based on a single origin and single recipe with regional variations. And yes, they're almost always badly sourced. However, I agree that merging is a step forward, under whichever name. No such user (talk) 15:52, 17 September 2018 (UTC)
• Support Small differences can be dealt in the merged article. --Maumivi (talk) 13:09, 18 September 2018 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Claim of Armenian origin of the word

@Reywas92:, you are correct that notability is not required in order to be cited.

In my edit [1], I was trying to address several issues. I'll try to explain them, sorry for the length of this comment...

The first is that I spent some time searching, and wasn't able to find any other reliable source that says the Turkish word comes from Armenian. On the other hand, I found several mainstream reliable sources that specify that its origin is "obscure" or "uncertain", including Merriam-Webster, the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, and Sevan Nişanyan's Turkish etymology dictionary. The latter, unless I'm misreading it, in fact specifically says that the Armenian word comes from Turkish or Kurdish.

Wikipedia's policy is not "incorporate all details"; on the contrary, WP:UNDUE (part of the neutral point of view policy) requires that:

each article or other page in the mainspace fairly represents all significant viewpoints that have been published by reliable sources, in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint in the published, reliable sources. Giving due weight and avoiding giving undue weight means that articles should not give minority views or aspects as much of or as detailed a description as more widely held views or widely supported aspects. Generally, the views of tiny minorities should not be included at all, except perhaps in a "see also" to an article about those specific views.

I would welcome additional citations of reliable sources showing that an Armenian origin of the word is a viewpoint held by a significant number of high quality, reliable sources. I'm not trying to make a point that the word, or the dish itself, is exclusively of Turkish origin. If enough are found though, we'd still need to clearly state that they contradict the other main sources. The statements that the word's origin is obscure or uncertain are positive statements, not simply that they haven't looked into it - the researchers have said that there is currently insufficient historical evidence to determine the origin. We can't simply tack on "but it might be Armenian", unless there is good reason to doubt that conclusion. Numerous articles have become battlegrounds for people making claims about Turkish/Armenian/Greek etc. national origins of various dishes (which is the reason this article has pending changes protection) and I think we should be conservative in requiring strong sources for such claims.

In my opinion, the claim, based on this one paper, doesn't reach the level of proportion among reliable sources to merit inclusion. I don't have anything against Razuvajeva, and I'm sure she is a competent researcher. I'm not saying it's necessarily a WP:FRINGE viewpoint, or biased. But even if we were to include the citation, it would require a strong disclaimer, something like "according to one paper by grad student Olga Razuvajeva in the University of Gaziantep Journal of Social Sciences, the Turkish word originates from the Armenian; however, according to Merriam-Webster and the Random House Unabridged Dictionary the origin cannot be determined, and linguist Sevan Nişanyan in his Etymological Dictionary of Contemporary Turkish states that the Armenian word comes from Turkish or Kurdish". To me this is still undue weight - too much effort is spent incorporating this one minor source that contradicts the others. Also, the article should not continue on to discuss "the Armenian root" of the word...

There is also the issue of the spelling, which was changed a few days ago to "žažik (ժաժիկ)": [2]. This change is unsourced, and contradicts the given source (Razuvajeva) which uses only "cacıg". This would also be relevant when comparing to Nişanyan who references the Armenian "cacıχ ճաճըխ". Unfortunately my knowledge of the languages isn't enough to know what's going on here...

Another issue I tried to address in my edit is that English Wikipedia should probably mostly be concerned with English etymology, especially in articles where etymology is not a particularly important aspect of the subject. I tried to include that at the beginning of the etymology section, not sure why it was reverted. While I'm not as adamant about it as some people (see Talk:Kebab#Etymology, and Talk:Shish kebab#1914 date, where I'm the one being criticized for adding information about Armenian word influences and foreign-language etymologies), I do think that sometimes etymology sections in food articles tend to be undue weight, and can become battlegrounds for people trying to show a specific national origin of foods that have actually evolved over centuries in broad regions. --IamNotU (talk) 15:16, 27 April 2019 (UTC)

Taratorin Arabic and in Lebanon means tahini flavoured with lemon juice salt and garlic

In what countries/cuisines/languages is tarator used interchangeably to refer to tzaziki (yoghurt and cucumber)? 'Tarator' in Arabic means a tahini based sauce flavoured with garlic and lemon. It is added to chickpea purée (Hoummus) to make Hoummus b'tehina. Any search for taratorwill confirm this. I repeat: In what languages/countries is the term tarator used to mean yoghut/parsley/cucumber ( lassi in Hindi)? RPSM (talk) 06:28, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

That is answered already in the History and Etymology sections:

In the Levant, taratur is a sauce based on tahini, while in Turkey and the Balkans it came to mean a combination of yogurt and cucumbers, sometimes with walnuts. ... The form tarator is found in languages from the Balkans to the Levant, and appears to be of Slavic origin, coming from Bulgaria.

--IamNotU (talk) 14:55, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

Lebanese tarator

Go to any authentic Lebanese cooking website, and TARATOR is a tahini/lemon juice/salt/garlic mix used to flavour felafel, chickpea puré (to make hoummus) aubergine (to make baba ghanoush), grilled fish & lamb. Outside of Lebanon, TARATOR is cucumber raita. Two different traditions & nomenclatures. You can find this information anywhere EXCEPT Wikipedia. RPSM (talk) 06:14, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

Um yes, you can find it on Wikipedia, in this very article. Look up. See the green box, where I answered your same question the last time? If you think it needs to be improved, you can WP:FIXIT. You could add a disambiguation hatnote pointing to the tahini article, you could add more information and citations about it there, or here, or you could write a new article about it. There are so many things you could do, other than shouting in all-caps, blaming everyone else for not already having done what you want, and just complaining over and over. --IamNotU (talk) 21:52, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

Tarator

Tarator is a kind of appetizer. Found in Ottoman cuisine. There are various tarator recipes in the first printed cookbook, Melceü't-Tabbâhîn. These are:

• Cucumber and Purslane Tarator
• Lobster Tarator
• Rock Fish Tarator
• Fish Egg Tarator
• Mackerel Fish Tarator Samizambak (talk) 21:49, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

References

Uncertain

The links to "uncertain" etymologies need to be removed. Once the etymologies are "ascertained" add them. Absolutely Certainly (talk) 17:04, 7 September 2022 (UTC)

Search for recipes of Turkish, Balkan or Cyprus Tzatzikio

Almost all recipes from the Google Books I checked have almost no references to Turkish, Balkan or Cyprus Tzatziki as being a yogurt and cucumber sauce. Predominantly the recipes from those regions are nut based with no yogurt. I cannot see the logic behind merging these completely different dishes into one article. Absolutely Certainly (talk) 17:59, 8 September 2022 (UTC)

In Turkey cacık is definitely yoghurt, cucumber, garlic and olive oil and resembles Greek tzatziki.

I have never come across a dish that does not have yoghurt referred to as cacık, nor did any cacık I’ve ever come across had nuts inside. Sapiocrat (talk) 15:01, 17 November 2023 (UTC)

Greek tzatziki should be with red wine vinegar

In the subsection for Greek tzatziki it says that the dish is commonly made with lemon juice. However, in Greece it is traditionally made with red wine vinegar, not lemon juice. I propose this be changed. Kogren the Wizard (talk) 02:36, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

Tzatziki

The history behind tzatziki should be more throughly researched in order to highlight the deep cultural background and tradition of yogurts even in Ancient and medieval Greece instead of just providing such a short explanation that leaves out many important cultural aspects behind the dish and also underestimates its recognition as a Greek dish too, not just a Turkish one.[[3]] 2A02:587:8524:1A00:3838:F2FC:E168:9597 (talk) 19:04, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

If you can provide specific information with reliable sources – researched books and journals, not a blog post from a restaurant – that would be welcome and helpful. Between names, origins, and ingredients, Gastronationalism is a real thing that clouds peoples' views of food and culture. Many foods in the Middle East and Southeast Europe have shared histories and styles and that needs to be covered here holistically, not emphasizing one particular version of it. Reywas92^Talk 19:43, 2 October 2024 (UTC)