Housewifery

Housewifery - Soup

Yesterday my daughter called to tell me she was ill and going home with a cold and cough, and my first thought was, “I wish I had some Jewish penicillin (chicken soup) to take to her.” Not only is soup easily digested for the person who is sick; it is also a comfort food, a warming food in cold weather. Because of her call, I decided this would be a good idea for a wintery Housewifery column, so here goes. . .

Soups are as old as the history of cooking. Combining various ingredients, along with stock or water, in a large pot to create a stick-to-your-ribs, nutritious meal that is simple to make and serve, I’m quite sure, happened as early a fire and any cooked foods.

"The etymological idea underlying the word soup is that of soaking. It goes back to an unrecorded post-classical Latin verb suppare soak', which was borrowed from the same prehistoric German root (sup-) as produced in English sup and supper. From it was derived the noun suppa, which passed into Old French as soupe. This meant both piece of bread soaked in liquid' and, by extension, broth poured onto bread.' It was the latter strand of the meaning that entered English in the seventeenth century. Until the arrival of the term soup, such food had been termed broth or pottage. It was customarily served with the meat or vegetable dishes with which it had been made, and (as the derivation of soup suggest) was poured over sops of bread or toast (the ancestors of modern croutons). But coincident with the introduction of the world soup, it began to be fashionable to serve the liquid broth on its own, and in the early eighteenth century it was assuming its present-day role as a first course."
---An A-Z of Food and Drink, John Ayto [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 2002 (p. 316)

There are soups, stews, pottages, porridges, all revolving around putting a variety of common local ingredients into hot broth to make a hearty, tasty meal. And these ingredients vary with location...Spanish gazpacho, New England chowder, Chinese won ton, French onion, to name but a few, show the variety of ingredients and taste while all doing the same, providing a filling and easily digested, simple meal.

French cuisine made popular the soups of today with their broth (pot-au-feu), bouillon, and consomme which began being served as starters in restoratifs (restaurants) in the 18th Century.

In the 1700‘s colonials began making a sort of bouillon cube by dehydrating or sun drying ingredients that could carried in a pouch or pocket, and, when added to water and boiled, would create a nutritious, easy meal while on the road, by soldiers, wagon trains, and cowboys along the trail.

Then in the mid-1800’s Campbell, among others, began canning soups, thus making soups portable.

Also, by taking roasted grains and grinding them and then adding them to hot water, a “soup” or porridge was made, which became a basic food, a staple for a hearty meal...now mostly used for breakfast or for folks who are ill and need light meals.

In the 19th Century, soups of the old classical kitchen were in fact complete dishes in themselves and contained, apart from the liquid content and its vegetable garnish, a wide variety of meat, poultry, game and fish. It is only the liquid part of these classical dishes which has retained the name of soup.

I have made a variety of soups over the years, and I’ll give you a three recipes. The first is from Raf’s grandmother, Mary Margaret Stout Clifford, born and raised in wester Pennsylvania and died at age 100. This recipe is at least 100 years old.

Grandma’s Vegetable Soup
1 1/2 pound stew meat
28 oz. canned tomatoes
2 Tablespoons Navy beans
2 Tablespoons dried split peas
2 Tablespoons barley
2 small onions, diced
2 stalks celery, diced
1 small piece of cabbage, diced
2 carrots, diced
2 Tablespoons frozen lima beans
2 Tablespoons sugar
1 small potato
salt and pepper to taste
1 small can of corn

Add first 6 ingredients. Cook until beans are soft before seasoning. Add carrots and cabbage about one hour before done. Add corn last.
(aside...I brown the meat after drenching it in flour and I find it amazing that it only begins to smell like “soup” after the sugar is added!)
The next soup is from my mother-in-law, Margaret Clifford Seibert, who was born and raised in western Pennsylvania, but who lived also in New Jersey, Ohio, New Mexico, and Texas.

9-Bean Soup
Cook ham bone (with some ham on) with a medium onion until tender. Remove bone from broth, but off ham in small pieces. Cool broth until fat can be skimmed off. Add 3 cups of a 9-bean dried bean bag you can buy at the supermarket and cook until the beans are done (about 2 hours). Add a medium can of tomatoes for the last 1/2 hour. Before adding beans (above) pre-cook the beans for 2 minutes and let stand for 1 hour, then cook as in the recipe above.

And, finally, here is my recipe for Chicken and Rice Soup. Start with a large container of chicken broth. To that add a package of raw chicken tenders. To that add the savories, an onion, several small carrots, and a couple of small celery stalks, chopped fine. Stir into the broth and chicken and bring to a boil, adding water as needed. Add sage to taste. I, personally, just dump some in, but you can get too much sage, so be careful. Then add salt and pepper to taste, and simmer for about 6 hours. As the chicken gets tender, cut it up with the spoon you use to stir. Keep after it until the chicken is in small bits. About 20 minutes before serving, add a cup of rice. Simmer until rice is cooked. Serve. This is delicious, and it gets more so after a day or two!

Well, that’s it for this time. Hope you enjoyed a little soup lesson and that you will enjoy making these soups in the cool weather. I wish you a joyous rest of the Christmas season and that you had a wonderful 2010. As Tiny Tim so aptly put it, “God bless us, everyone!”

Until next time...keep warm and safe!