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Where in the distribution does culinary art go?

Probably in the pile of questions that editors discard.

In all seriousness, though, it'd probably go in Other Art, although out of curiosity do you really think there are culinary art topics that would be ask-able at a regular difficulty level? Or, actually, is there any culinary art topic at all that could even fit as the third part of a Misc. Academic bonus? Because, er, I can't exactly figure if culinary arts are significant enough to come up in the first place...

I have no idea what you mean by "culinary art" specifically, but questions and clues about food come up in pop culture and general knowledge (and sometimes geography) fairly regularly.

dude you don't play IESA anymore

The only questions I can remember on food are that one common link tossup at the 2014 NSC on peaches that used clues about Peach Melba and Bellinis for the first half, and a tossup I played a few years back in practice on avocados.

If you're planning on writing culinary arts questions...don't. A culture's food is a fine thing to ask about as part of a question, but an entire tossup on food would devolve into either the proper way to water McIntosh Apples in an arid climate or asking about the proper use of white truffles with foie gras and beluga caviar.

I think a lot depends on the answerline. Asking for "Beef Stroganoff" or whatever isn't going to be very productive. But I'm sure you could come up with interesting and culturally significant tossups on things like "apples", "beer", "peppers" etc. At some level, whether one thinks such things are appropriate depends on your definition of what academic competition should focus on. Personally, I think there should be more tossups on things like food, corporations, and other things that have an important impact on people's lives which aren't really "trash", but aren't necessarily considered "academic" in the usual sense. But I know that in many instances (cf. "curved yellow fruit") tossups on such topics have been poorly written. It may be that people who are more inclined to like such tossups are also the sort of people who don't gravitate as much towards pyramidal quizbowl. But we ran into the same argument in terms of 4 quarter format, which in 4+ years of running NHBB, we've shown to be compatible with good quizbowl, even if it's not to everyone's tastes. It would be interesting to see good examples of culinary tossups. If anyone has any in the public domain, maybe post them below and we can discuss their merits accordingly?

Still, how many questions exist on culinary art vs. history / common link aspects of food? I distinctly recall a tossup on absinthe at the 2014 HSNCT along the lines of the latter, although I don't have the text of that particular question on hand.

PAGING JOHN LAWRENCE

But in all seriousness, I don't think I've ever seen a culinary arts/food question labeled as "fine arts." The tossup that comes to mind to me that hasn't been brought up yet is this year's CO tossup on Sachertorte, which I believe was a "your choice" selection.

Yeah, honestly, wherever this belongs, I don't think it's as part of the fine arts distribution.

I would agree that the culinary arts can be practiced as fine art in real life, but for the purposes of quiz bowl, it has to go in the Trash/Misc. distribution.

Corner Grocery Store wrote:The only questions I can remember on food are that one common link tossup at the 2014 NSC on peaches that used clues about Peach Melba and Bellinis for the first half, and a tossup I played a few years back in practice on avocados.

If you're planning on writing culinary arts questions...don't. A culture's food is a fine thing to ask about as part of a question, but an entire tossup on food would devolve into either the proper way to water McIntosh Apples in an arid climate or asking about the proper use of white truffles with foie gras and beluga caviar.

I'm not sure what tournaments you've been reading/playing, but I would say that the majority of collegiate NAQT tournaments that I've played have included food tossups (presumably as part of their general knowledge distribution). And various other mACF tournaments in the past years have used food questions as part of the Trash/Misc. distribution (off the top of my head, these include: MAGNI, WIT, ACF Regionals 2013).

Your examples of what a culinary arts tossup would "devolve into" are patently absurd, and do not reflect how any food question I've ever seen has been written.

While I of course greatly enjoyed the Sachertorte tossup on CO, obviously food tossups do not need to be (and should not need to be) that difficult when written for any other difficulty. I suggest that the easiest way to write these is as common-link on a pretty basic ingredient or foodstuff as used in different dishes across cultures. And that seems to be what most people have done.

I'm not sure if it's necessary to lay out a "poetics of food" in this thread, but I would say you should try to write food questions in an "intellectual way." For example, I wrote that sachertorte tossup after cooking it in Star Ocean 3 reading through Michael Krondl's Sweet Invention, a history of desert. I think that the MAGNI tossup on sauces that used garum as a lead-in was also fits the bill, because if you engage with ancient Roman social history or even art history (since garum was stored in pottery), you will probably have encountered it.

This is actually where I like NAQT's general knowledge category, because writers do have the capability to use it to write on food and other worldly topics that really don't have a place in academic quizbowl. If someone wanted to throw in 3/3 culintary arts per a tournament instead of trash, I wouldn't complain; just don't use it to write on CapriSun.

As Ike and John say, food is not only an appropriate general knowledge topic, but it also has interesting overlaps with history, art, and cultural geography. Rather than trying to shoehorn tossups on "culinary art" itself into the art distribution, we should continue to explore these overlapping areas by using interesting food clues when it's appropriate in other categories, while confining pure "food" tossups to the trash/general knowledge/other segment of the distribution.

2013 Geography Olympiad wrote:A "black" type of this food is made in Old Forge, Pennsylvania, with black pepper. Another variation on this food is sometimes named after Steubenville or the Ohio Valley. The Quad Cities-style of this food includes malt mixed into its base. A common version of this food may have been invented by either Ike Sewell, Ric Riccardo, or Rudy Malnati at a restaurant that spawned a second location called Due. This food served at Unos can come with pineapple and ham in its Hawaiian style. For 10 points, name this food that can be found as a deep dish in Chicago or a thin crust in New York.

Geography questions should be culture questions and food is part of culture; I'd like to see it there more often. This question probably could have been improved by not mentioning the name of a pizza chain, which is more of a trash clue, until right at the end if at all, but otherwise it's a great example of why food belongs in this category.

This year at NHBB there was a bonus round topic titled "history of food." I can't think of anything more revealing than that. Regardless of you opinion of NHBB, you should at least acknowledge the role that food had and continues to have in shaping our history, our culture, and even our geography. Marie Antoinette said "let them eat cake", and the Swiss defended against tank invasion with the Toblerone Line. Food has always been an integral part of what makes us human, and it is arrogant to exclude something that you don't hear often is plain stupid. It is the same argument against simply recycling answer lines. If you never do anything new then nothing will ever change.

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We in the sovereign state of Illinois have an uneasy history with this topic.

One year, the final bonus of a championship match had the subject of pasta shapes. This was problematic not only because of its placement in the packet, but such shapes can vary by size (tortellini vs. tortelloni), name (penne rigate vs. rigati), or brand (one person's pappardelle is another one's tagliatelle), and no alternative answers were given.

I see no problem with an occasional well-written food question now and then. And Dave, I could actually write a decent tossup on Beef Stroganoff given its history. And don't write any questions on General Tsou's Chicken if Ike is anywhere nearby.

I wrote a history tossup on "Wonder Bread" once - this product was actually very important in 20th century US history and ending several malnutrition based diseases. It was universally panned.

Skepticism and Animal Feed wrote:I wrote a history tossup on "Wonder Bread" once - this product was actually very important in 20th century US history and ending several malnutrition based diseases. It was universally panned.

I once wrote one on ranch salad dressing that received a very similar reception.

Dartmouth submitted a pretty interesting tossup on the history of the Turkey for WIT a few years back. Food can be asked about in a variety of places within the distribution as long as a writer is smart and not too whimsical or indulgent about it. Food, after all, is probably the single most important substance in human history.

Black Miao wrote:dude you don't play IESA anymore

Regionals are tomorrow. My players may or may not have access to a glossary of cooking terms so they know the difference between whisking and kneading, flambé vs. sauté, etc.

In the Editors' Packet of 2014 ACF Fall, I came across this tossup:

An Indonesian dish of this type including boiled vegetables and hard-boiled eggs in peanut sauce is called gado-gado. Dishes of this type that integrate bread include fattoush and panzanella. Mustard is often added to a component of these dishes as an emulsifier. One of these dishes that features olives, hard-boiled eggs, and tuna is named for the town Nice. Another dish of this kind is made with apples, celery, walnuts, and mayonnaise, and is named for the Waldorf. A popular one of these dishes includes lots of black pepper, raw egg, and Worcestershire sauce on a bed of romaine. For 10 points, name these dishes that include varieties like “Cobb” and “Caesar.”
ANSWER: salads [accept any more specific salad; anti-prompt on “Salad Dressings” or any more specific dressing, like “vinaigrette”]

Can whoever wrote this tossup tell us what category this ended up in? Was it FA, Trash, what? It certainly doesn't seem like the common conception of trash, but it also wouldn't fit very cleanly into "other fine arts", "history", or "geography". It's really just a culture question.

Basically, can an ACF editor weigh in and tell us where they think a tossup on culinary culture should go?

Invisible Rail wrote:In the Editors' Packet of 2014 ACF Fall, I came across this tossup:

An Indonesian dish of this type including boiled vegetables and hard-boiled eggs in peanut sauce is called gado-gado. Dishes of this type that integrate bread include fattoush and panzanella. Mustard is often added to a component of these dishes as an emulsifier. One of these dishes that features olives, hard-boiled eggs, and tuna is named for the town Nice. Another dish of this kind is made with apples, celery, walnuts, and mayonnaise, and is named for the Waldorf. A popular one of these dishes includes lots of black pepper, raw egg, and Worcestershire sauce on a bed of romaine. For 10 points, name these dishes that include varieties like “Cobb” and “Caesar.”
ANSWER: salads [accept any more specific salad; anti-prompt on “Salad Dressings” or any more specific dressing, like “vinaigrette”]

Can whoever wrote this tossup tell us what category this ended up in? Was it FA, Trash, what? It certainly doesn't seem like the common conception of trash, but it also wouldn't fit very cleanly into "other fine arts", "history", or "geography". It's really just a culture question.

Basically, can an ACF editor weigh in and tell us where they think a tossup on culinary culture should go?

I don't represent ACF in any fashion, but I did write this tossup as trash editor. I conceived of "trash" as an "other" distribution, which is why there were the fashion tossup on "red," this tossup, and a few much more "serious" topics (in addition to the submitted Weird Al, Maroon 5, and Eminem).

Black Miao wrote:dude you don't play IESA anymore

I think we can all agree that quizbowl could use some more cultured buttermilk tossups.