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These two tags are somewhat redundant as written:

:

Questions about the use of culinary salt in the kitchen.

:

Questions about the use of salt, spices and other flavorings to create the desired flavor in the final dish.

I propose two options for the community to consider:

  1. Combine the two. "Seasoning" is very often used to refer to salt, particularly by chefs. When they say "underseasoned", they usually mean "lacking salt".

  2. Remove "salt" from the tag and only use it to refer to herbs and spices and other flavorings. We have a tag for salt specifically, there's no reason to double tag something.

What are your thoughts on this?

I noticed this in the edit suggestion for this question, where a user recommended adding both tags, which I felt was redundant, particularly since the question has nothing to do with seasoning, and everything to do with salt, so I only added the tag.

2 Answers 2

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Since the answer below was well-received, I updated the tag wiki for as described below, and the tags will stay separate.

Of the two, I definitely favor the second. The first doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me: we'd have to merge into , and then everyone who doesn't equate "seasoning" and "salt" would be confused.

So maybe just a slight tweak to :

Questions about the use of spices, herbs, salt and other flavorings to create the desired flavor in the final dish. See also .

That said, I'm not sure how worried I am about it. Trying to keep tags from overlapping is a good general goal but I'm not sure how possible it is in practice. We have along with , , and so on. So it seems just as acceptable for and to coexist. It seems fair to use when you're asking about something more general (possibly including salt!), and use when you care specifically about salt.

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    Sure, that makes total sense... perhaps if we de-emphasize "salt" from the "seasoning" tag? Rather than have it be the first seasoning listed, list it later to emphasize the flavoring elements?
    – Catija
    Commented Feb 12, 2016 at 17:48
  • That being said, I don't know that "cookies" and "baking" are exactly analogous.
    – Catija
    Commented Feb 12, 2016 at 17:49
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    @Catija The analogy was mostly about current tag definitions, where we're treating seasoning as a general thing which includes salt. (I know the "some people think they're synonyms part" doesn't carry over though.)
    – Cascabel Mod
    Commented Feb 12, 2016 at 17:53
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    This works for me. To me salt is a seasoning, but not the only one. I know that some consider salt to be synonymous with seasoning, but not everyone sees it that way.
    – Jolenealaska Mod
    Commented Feb 12, 2016 at 21:00
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    Just a thought: I think we cannot lose the "salt" tag completely as you can use salt for other uses than just seasoning (e.g., in a crust).
    – Mien
    Commented Feb 19, 2016 at 13:04
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Salt is often used as a preservative, not a spice.

Matias style herrings are simply inedible without further processing (either washing them, or adding to some sauce/dish that is not pre-salted, so their saltiness is diluted, while seasoning the dish) - using 'seasoning' in case of preserving foods with salt would be quite counter-intuitive.

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