Talk:Éclair

A note

A possible origin for the name "éclair" would be that the pastry is generally quick to prepare and simple. As they say in french "vite comme l'éclair" : "quick like lightning" —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mapdark (talk • contribs) 17:42, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Another note

The recipe linked to shows that chocolate eclairs are filled with vanilla pastry cream so it is not true that the icing is the same flavor as the filling. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sheherazahde (talk • contribs) 19:54, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

The outside icing indicates the interior flavor in France - in the US it is almost universally chocolate on the outside and some sort of vanilla custard or whipped cream on the inside, shocking a French person who bites into one unawares. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 204.65.182.239 (talk) 22:55, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

Merge

Tagged Moorkop to merge in. Moorkop is the Dutch name for a Chocolate Eclair.  Ronhjones  ^(Talk) 21:32, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

Yes. A merge is in order. Richigi (talk) 04:44, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Well, maybe. I just searched for images of moorkop, and they actually look like chocolate profiteroles. I mean, they are round rather than oblong. The question: do we define eclairs by their shape or the chocolate glaze? Richigi (talk) 05:25, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Surely Moorkop would (and should) merge with Bossche bol instead. Incremental Improvements (talk) 21:41, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

I concur, Moorkop should be merged with Bossche Bol, not with eclair, particularly considering that both are spherical and originated in the Netherlands. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.208.170.26 (talk) 17:02, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

this article should indeed NOT be merged with Eclair. Moorkop is quite different from Chocolate Eclair and indeed, IF it should be merged with anything, the best candidate to merge with is Bossche bol as there are some striking similarities. Though invented in another way, they are nearly the same and could be seen as different styles of the same product. Merging it with Eclair is like merging an article about Carrots with an article about Broccoli "because they are both vegetables." 178.85.42.130 (talk) 16:50, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the proposal was moved, without prejudice against a separate RM relating to the diacritic. --BDD (talk) 18:49, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

• Éclair (pastry) → Éclair
• Éclair → Éclair (disambiguation)

– Of the items on the disambiguation list, none can compare to this article's 13,000+ pageviews per month. In fact, of them all, only Eclair (camera) has a full article all to itself. The Final Fantasy character was called "Eclair" only in the backstory of the Japanese version; the redirects for the Kiddy Grade character and the Android operating system version all get less than 1,000 pageviews per month. La Pucelle: Tactics is in the 3,000 range, but only a fraction of those views likely found it via a search for "Eclair". The pastry is clearly the primary topic. Powers ^T 02:08, 10 September 2013 (UTC) Powers ^T 02:08, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

• Alternate rename this to eclair, since this pastry is also found in the English world [1], and frequently doesn't sport the accent. Both the accented and unaccented forms would redirect to the pastry article -- 70.24.244.158 (talk) 02:52, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

70.24.244.158, the English speaking world also uses é. Where in the English-speaking world would anyone deliberately omit a French accent on a French loanword? Per WP:RS "reliable for the statement being made", we don't count basic-ASCII-only sources for beyond-basic-ASCII spellings. If we did we'd have to misspell. Reliable sources which use café, crêpes flambées and so on, don't use É for éclair, so cookbooks with a full font set spell the éclair as éclair:

Darra Goldstein Baking Boot Camp 2007 Page 256 "The shape of a baked éclair depends upon how it is formed before baking.

Wayne Gisslen Professional Baking 2008 Page 337 "Fit a large pastry bag with a plain tube. Fill the bag with the éclair paste"

Google Books shows no evidence that full-font set cookbooks use é for other French foods then remove it from éclair to "eclair". In ictu oculi (talk) 08:29, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

Again I must challenge your assumption that sources that don't use diacritics are basic-ASCII-only; the decision not to use them may in fact be an editorial choice. Regardless, you're correct that the accented version is widely used in English-language sources, which is why I don't support eclair as the page title. Powers ^T 14:16, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

I agree with Powers about the assumption that not using diacritics is because it is an ASCII only source. There are many people who do not spell it with an accent, as can easily be assessed by walking into a bakery and looking at hand written signs. This is a pastry made in the English world, so this is easy to see if bakers use it or not, and not all of them do. This can be seen in product packaging for prepackaged baked goods in supermarkets, which use fully stylized graphic packaging. -- 70.24.244.158 (talk) 03:14, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

@70.24.244.158: If you can provide Wikipedia Commons with a photo of a pre-packaged éclair in a Canadian supermarket where the French printed label says "éclair," but the English left hand side of the same package says "eclair"? That would be an interesting jpg for the Official bilingualism in Canada article. Especially if it's that way from a factory (but I didn't think pasties were factory made).

In any case we don't follow English-language bakers in Canada, and WP:RS "sources reliable for the statement" excludes 52-character ABC/abc 7-bit basic ASCII sources, just as we don't follow sources which call Renée Fleming "Renee Fleming".

This is en.wp practice, and this article is under WP:RS and WP:FRMOS just as any other. In ictu oculi (talk) 06:34, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

I've actually been to the United States, and walked into bakeries and supermarkets there. As for FRMOS, this particular product doesn't show much affinity for France/Belgium or French-speaking regions, since it is produced worldwide in bakeries. It isn't a location in France, or a person from France. I would say it isn't particularly associated with French cuisine, considering its appearances in cookbooks not associated with French cooking, but with general desserts and general baking. I do not think it is one of the products protected by PDO, correct me if I'm wrong. Pastries do come from local city factories, made overnight, and delivered in the morning (or frozen (yes, I've seen frozen eclairs)) I'll see if I can scrounge up a photo, though I'm currently in a French region of Canada. If you check Google Images [2] you'll see some without accents and some with, such as this frozen product [3][4]; there's also these weird concoctions [5]. Incidentally, this one is British [6] -- 70.24.244.158 (talk) 15:22, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

Um... wouldn't the product fail free-image-status being a product label? So, uploading to Commons would seem to be a problem. I could upload it to zippyshare or something. -- 70.24.244.158 (talk) 13:52, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

It's a methodology issue: The questions are:

1. does a reliable source say "Chocolate eclair / Éclair au chocolat. Contains animal fat / Contient de la graisse animale.", indicating a language issue rather than a typographic issue? Answer = So far Google Books says no.

2. does a reliable source say "Café flambé, such as Nestlé Nespresso, is the perfect compliment to a chocolate eclair" indicating that typographically reliable source which uses café flambé Nestlé has eclair."? Answer = So far Google Books says no.

The methodology of the 7-bit ASCII warriors "56 character sources don't have accents and this is mentioned in a lot of 52 character sources so let's spell it in 52 characters" or conjecture "most Canadian bakers are francophobes (or believe their customers are francophobes) and deliberately leave off accents not because they can't spell but as a nationalist English First marketing ploy" or similar have no place in Britannica, so have no place here. In ictu oculi (talk) 02:46, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

Locally, I'm finding a lot of bakeries print French-only labels. But I have found that in France, they do not always use an accent.[7], though it's a French language source, so therefore, not helpful in this discussion. However, the previously indicated product packages clearly indicate non-accented use in the US and UK. If you sell the product professionally, I'd say you're an authority on it. Though the Gazette prints accents, and has used "eclair" without one [8][9] -- 70.24.249.39 (talk) 10:05, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

That 2013 article in the French journaldesfemmes.com on Pâtisserie Fauchon's chocolate week is printed using one of the French unicode fonts which doesn't have space for accentation in capitals, consequently the article goes éclair... Eclair... éclair. As for the 1977 and 1978 English Montreal Gazette article, I see no sign of any non 7-bit ASCII characters, but that is actually before 7-bit ASCII, in those days the foreman printer kept his accented metal type é bits in an old Ovaltine tin on the bench next to his Woodbines and the big spanner. In any case it isn't our job to duplicate typographical limitations. In ictu oculi (talk) 09:05, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

If you examine other articles in those newspapers, you'll find accents on letters in French phrases. -- 70.24.249.39 (talk) 07:51, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

• Prefer moving to Eclair, but this move would be an improvement. The pastry is definitely the primary topic, but it's most often spelled without an accent mark in English. 168.12.253.66 (talk) 14:50, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

168.12.253.66, but as above I could not find any full-font equipped book which spelled it without an accent. In ictu oculi (talk) 15:18, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

• Support move of pastry article to main Eclair subject page with accent. Without accent is second choice. Candleabracadabra (talk) 03:53, 11 September 2013 (UTC)
• Support Even though I can't remember ever seeing the word used in American English spelled with an accent on the E before (native Californian who studied French a little bit in high school). However, as long as Eclair redirects to the accented version, then I'm quite happy to support the accented version as the primary article under the name, with the disambig page as a link off of it. —Willscrlt ( Talk | com | b:en | meta ) 13:16, 12 September 2013 (UTC)
• Strong support for Eclair; nevertheless, strong oppose of the move as proposed. The ngrams show that there is an enormous preference for the unaccented version in reliable English-language sources. [10] Red Slash 02:55, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

  Isn't the accented version at least an improvement over the current? Also, I'm not sure I trust that ngram result; I clicked through to search for books that use "eclair" and a lot of the results used "éclair"; furthermore, I clicked through one book that had "eclair" in the quoted blurb and found that "éclair" was used in the actual text! So some proportion of these books got transcribed without the accent even if they actually use it, making the ngram results highly suspect. The increase for "éclair" found in the last decade could very well be due to text that Google acquires directly from publishers rather than via scanning (which might all scan as unaccented). Powers ^T 13:06, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

  Are you serious? That could change a lot for move proposals if that's true. We are relying so much on ngrams these days, and if they're not accurate... wow. I can't decide yet to change my 'vote' but that's disquieting. Red Slash 04:43, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

  Ngrams are good for some things, but even a casual review of the corpus indicate that a lot of words that have diacritics as published get transcribed into Google's database without them. You can check for yourself. Powers ^T 02:20, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

  Oh, and whoops, I had better clarify--no matter what, support move of éclair to éclair (disambiguation) and redirecting it to this article, at least. Red Slash 04:45, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

  According to the ngram above, nobody spelled this word with an accent prior to about 1990. French accents were all the rage in the early 1900s, so it's safe to assume that this is an OCR problem. Merriam-Webster uses the accent, while Oxford drops it. À chacun son goût. 192.186.141.110 (talk) 03:15, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

• Support per nom. Clear primary topic and the accented version is very commonly used by English speakers. -- Necrothesp (talk) 09:21, 13 September 2013 (UTC)
• Comment Eclair (disambiguation) should also point to the disambiguation page -- 70.24.249.39 (talk) 10:05, 15 September 2013 (UTC)
• Support per nom - the pastry is the primary topic irrespective of the presence or absence of accents. bd2412 T 23:12, 16 September 2013 (UTC)
• I see snow support for moving now to Éclair. Save the debate over Éclair vs. Eclair for another day. Bread doesn't have to compete with Bread (band) for primary topic. – Wbm1058 (talk) 20:07, 18 September 2013 (UTC)
• Support per nom. Accent is not wrong. Éclair/Eclair is a debate for another day. In any case, we should have Eclair redirect to the new Éclair (and vice versa if we decide to switch to the unaccented form in the future). mooncow 12:47, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Citation #6 goes to lottery/gambling site

The 6th citation (which is supposed to go to an article about why the eclair is named after lightning) instead redirects to a website that seems to be about gambling. We should investigate this and possibly remove the citation if there is nothing we can do about the redirect. 209.237.105.194 (talk) 15:53, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

still not fixed. 158.181.80.90 (talk) 22:04, 11 July 2023 (UTC)