For whatever reason the Wikipedia articles I’ve found don’t clear up this question for me.
The terms bean, pea, lentil, gram, legume, and pulse — are they interchangeable? So they designate separate things? Or is it all hopelessly confused?
What’s the deal? Are they just arbitrary designations?
Beans, peas, and lentils are all kinds of legumes. Peanuts, too. All of the legumes are high in proteins, including amino acids that are usually uncommon in plant foods, and they all (or rather, symbiotic bacteria that live in their roots) help to fix nitrogen, replenishing land that’s been depleted in growing other crops.
I’ve never heard “gram” used for anything but the metric unit, the mass of one cubic centimeter of water.
And I think that “pulse” is the word for the seed of a legume, which is usually the part that we eat.
They are partly overlapping categories. Some terms apply to a whole plant family, others to a single species.
The broadest is legume, referring to any member of the family Fabaceae, which includes beans, peas, lentils, and chickpeas and thousands of other species.
Pulses are generally edible seeds of the family Fabaceae, including beans, peas, lentils, and chickpeas.
“Bean” can be applied to various edible legume seeds in several different genera. It is also applied to seeds in other plant families such as coffee beans. The application of this name is somewhat arbitrary.
Peas are generally the seeds of Pisum sativum, but several other species are also called peas, like chickpeas, pigeon peas, and cowpeas. As with beans, which species are called peas is somewhat arbitrary.
Lentils are one species of pulse, Lens culinaris
Gram is a flour made of ground chickpeas.
Does that afore mentioned ‘gram’ have anything to do with ‘Graham’ in Graham crackers…yum
No, I believe that comes from a Mr. Graham, the ‘inventor’.
But it would be connected to “garam”, as in garam masala (an Indian dish of spiced chickpeas).
And as an illustration of the names being somewhat arbitrary, chickpeas are also called Garbanzo beans. Are they peas or are they beans? Doesn’t matter.
That’s incorrect. Garam masala is a spice mixture, while the dish of spiced chickpieas is chana masala.
The “garam” in “garam masala” means “hot” or “warm.” It means “warming spices” and refers to a spice mixture that can be used in a variety of dishes, not just chickpeas.
No, that’s “gram flour”. Gram is an umbrella term for non-split pulses, like chickpeas or soybeans. It’s the antonym of dal, for split pulses like peas or lentils.
Pulses are specifically those legumes that are harvested dry for human consumption, so garden peas are legumes, but not pulses.
And yes, the distinctions are arbitrary and nebulous. Like the distinction between peas and beans.
You might be confusing that with the usual name of the chickpea dish, which is chana masala or chole masala. Chana is the Hindi word for gram (as in unsplit pulses), as I understand it, but in most cases when I see it, it seems to refer to chickpeas. Perhaps someone with a bit more of Hindi knowledge can chime in.
ETA: Oops, I see the chana masala part has already been mentioned.
And I think we’ve established that it’s been way too long since I’ve ordered at an Indian restaurant. I really ought to do something about that…
Thanks for that. I’ve been wondering lately why you never see “fresh” kidney beans, black beans, etc. I was envisioning the beans being harvested like peas, then either dried or cooked and put in cans, and I kept thinking, “Why can’t I get them neither cooked nor dried?” It never occurred to me that they were harvested dried like, well, like seeds. :smack:
And I’m a vegetarian and I love Indian cooking. I eat some variety of bean/lentil/pulse/dal/etc. at damn near every meal. :smack::smack:
I suppose next you’re going to tell me that if they’re harvested in their immature state, they’re “green” beans.
It never occurred to me, either, that they’d be already dried when harvested. Certainly with green beans, you want to harvest them before they dry out.
It always refers to chickpeas, AIUI, not other kinds of gram- sometimes the dark smaller kind, desi chana or kala chana, which aren’t like the common Western type. *Chole * or kabuli chana are the larger kind more familiarin the west (so, usually, if a restaurant round here serves chana masala, it’s actually chole masala) .
*Chana *is gram, but not all *gram *is chana.
Well, yes. And then again, no. The green beans we get are specifically bred to be harvested young, with less fibrousness, so aren’t the same varietals as the dried beans - i suspect green beans make poor dried beans, and vice-versa.
OK, it looks like there are different types of chana (kabuli, desi/kala), but they all just seem to be a different variety of chickpea, with kabuli chana being what we know as Garbanzo beans or chickpeas, and the latter being a smaller, dark version of the chickpea called a “black chickpea.”
This seems to call for a Venn diagram.
When I saw the thread title, I was sure this was going to be some sort of livestreaming spam post.
Yeah, it’s better to post an actual coherent question as a thread title. I tend to shoot first and ask questions later when I see a bunch of words strung together, which is a typical strategy of the spammers.
Close, but not precisely.
I just find it fascinating that we’re using the quantum scale factor (as in, you can define how far you are from quantum scale in terms of how large or small h is to you) directly to define what a kilogram is…
… and we still can’t make the foundational unit the gram, instead!