There are few sure things in the world — we will grow up, we will grow old, gravity will keep us on Earth, social constructs exist, love is real, and soup is good. Well, maybe the last one is not really true in everyone’s opinion, but I believe it to be true, and so do many others.
Soup: A brief history
So, what is soup, anyway?
The beginning of soup is actually not definite. Soup might be as old as cooking itself, which also has unclear origins. The word ‘soup’ itself comes from Germanic sop, meaning ‘broth.’ It later evolved into the Latin word suppa, meaning “bread soaked in broth,” to the French term soupa, which means ‘soup or broth,’ and finally, to ‘soup’ as we know it today.
Though the name is Germanic in origin, there is some evidence that soup may have originated in China. Burn marks left on pottery from Xianrendong cave in south China suggests that soup may be 20,000 years old, the burns indicating that something was in those pots brewing.
There are also suggestions that soup may date back even further. Neanderthals may have been making soup, as they would have needed to boil fat off of animal bones to avoid eating only lean meat, and did not have to wait for waterproof containers to be invented — they could have made vessels for soup out of animal hide and tree bark, which do not preserve well and may be the reason we do not have consistent evidence of Neanderthals cooking. These early versions would likely have been broths of some sort.
In the Middle Ages, soup was an important source of food for people of all classes, as it could be made by dumping a host of ingredients into a pot. It also helped avoid a monotony in food — you could still eat a filling meal of soup at any time of the year with ingredients that changed based on season or personal preference.
In 16th century France, street vendors and public dining spots began to sell varieties of soup, and were called restoratifs, meaning ‘to restore,’ and is also where the word ‘restaurant’ originated. These soups included broths, stews, and bouillons.
18th century travelers kept dried ingredients with them to make soup on the go. Later, in 1897, Campbell’s Condensed canned soup was invented, which led to the famous canned soup we know today.
Importance of food
Eating styles have changed over the years in America. In television, we see the nuclear family — the mother spending all day cooking a dinner, the father coming home from work, the children returning from school—all sitting around the dining table to talk about their days.
In practice, family-style meals are often not the case. While some people still strive for this traditional take on eating, with most families having both parents working increasingly long work weeks, sometimes sitting down for a full family meal is not always an option. Picking up something on the way home from work is more commonplace, while sometimes family members are left to fend for themselves.
This phenomenon seems relatively widespread across America, particularly in more modern and younger families. America is among the most depressed and anxious countries in the world, this is due to multiple reasons, but the fast-paced lifestyles under a late-stage capitalist regime do not make things any better. Eating separately from friends and family also leads to skewed eating times — I know that even I am subject to this, I often cannot eat dinner until 10 p.m. after work, several hours after my family has eaten.
Countries around the world have more of a focus on the importance of social eating and commensality, or the act of eating together, and eating on a time schedule. France, in particular, is a country in which eating together is so important, it is referred to as the norm, and there are people who eat on synchronized schedules so they are able to eat with others.
A study in Tasmania about eating with friends found that it decreased social isolation in older people and developed a sense of community. Research on a Thai citizens provided evidence that people feel happier when they dined with others.
Eating with friends leads to mental health benefits as well. Food can make us feel better, in some cases reduce symptoms of anxiety and depression. While food is not a cure for mental illness, anything that can increase well-being is useful. On top of that, simply being around family and friends can also help reduce anxiety and depression. Having that solid support system is always going to be a benefit to help with mental illness and seeing them for a nice meal will ease stress. Unfortunately, in America, we do not value commensality and mental health as much as other cultures.
Thoughts of soup: Interviews
The American idea of food and culture is a very interesting spectacle, with our world-famous fast food chains and lack of focus on community. I interviewed a few friends and colleagues to gain some insight about the meaning soup — a food that is present everywhere — and their connections to their own culture while being American.
My lovely friend Katie, whose favorite soup is lobster bisque and eats soup a couple times a month, had a lot to say about soup.
“Can I be controversial?” was her immediate response to being asked how she defines a soup. “I think cereal is a soup. I would also consider stew, gumbo a soup, chili a soup. I think soup is just liquid with aspects of solid in it, so like stew’s like that, cereal’s like that, if you have a bowl of water with some potatoes in it, that’s a soup too.”
We got into a bit of a debate about the logistics of cereal as a soup — before she made the claim that queso and buffalo chicken dip are also soups. By Katie’s standards, a considerable amount of food is soup. When I asked her what her definition of soup as an abstract concept was, she seemed to know one thing.
“It’s a comfort liquid,” she said. “I think warm feeling, warm tummy, warm heart for my cold soup.”
Katie eats her lobster bisque at a restaurant in her hometown, but most of the time at home, eats clam chowder her mom makes.
“I’m the only one in my family who’s a really die-hard clam chowder person, so every time my mom would make clam chowder, I’d be the only one truly excited to have clam chowder. I think that was just one of those defining ‘I love soup’ moments,” she said of her mother’s canned clam chowder.
As previously stated, food is a social thing to many cultures. I was curious to see whether or not soup would be social for others as well.
“I think regardless of how I eat soup, there’s always a sense of community. So if I eat it with my friends there’s like a lightheartedness,” she responded after a moment of thinking. “Like I said, it’s a comfort food, so eat it with family, it’s also good.”
Like many Americans, Katie does not have an exact idea of what her ancestry is, even after taking a DNA test to find out.
“My mother’s Irish, my father — we’re not really sure, he’s just kind of White. We’ve got some Swiss, then literally like 10 other things make up like a quarter of me,” she laughed. “I think my family is weird in a sense of we’ve never had a sense of culture, ancestry, it’s always been, like, very Americanized — so ‘hot dogs for lunch and hamburgers for dinner, beer for dessert.’”
My dear friend Megan, whose favorite soup is potato and eats soup three times a month, was very insightful on the topic of soup.
“I consider chili and stew to be sub-types of soup. To me, a soup is a dish that’s meant to be eaten on its own that is in large part liquid,” she said, which is not too far off from Katie’s response. “Metaphorically, I would define soup as — I mean, universally it’s a comfort. You can have some very, you know, out there soups, like gazpacho, which is cold, and even then, it’s considered a comfort food when you have the very warm humid days in Spain.”
Once again, we see the use of the term comfort for soup. I asked her if she had any specific soup-related memories she wouldn’t mind sharing.
“I don’t necessarily have any strong soup related memories,” she paused for a moment in contemplation. “Although, I do remember going to Grinders when I was very young with my grandparents — who are dead now — and they would have these specials where they’d have broccoli cheddar soup with noodles in it and I remember that was just my favorite and I’d get that sometimes with them. Clam chowder always makes me think of my little sister — it used to be her favorite when she was little, although she would never eat the clam parts, she would eat everything else in it but not the clams. She would eat the chowder.”
I asked her about how she prefers to eat soup, and again, family came to mind.
“My family mostly makes potato soup; my family is a big potato kind of people. My favorite way of eating soup — I would say these days — is when I do manage to go over and see my parents and my little sister and we have soup, and I’m in the old rocking chair in that room and we’re watching Jeopardy,” she said.
I have known Megan for a few years and know her family is very important to her, as is her ancestry.
“My family is primarily Irish culture-wise, but that’s just because the Irish members of my family have been the loudest — I’m predominantly Alsatian,” she responded when I asked her where her family originates.
I still wondered, though, how close she actually felt to her culture.
“As close as I can from never having visited [Ireland] and, you know, being born and raised in the U.S. I think that there has to be some sort of phenomenon that I would love to research more — it seems to me that everybody in America has, or at least all White people in America, have this idea of like ‘I’m American but I’m Irish, I’m Italian, I’m German, I’m this, I’m that,’ but so many of us, like, we’re not actually from there; we’ve never been there. I think it has a massive impact because if you actually compare what a German person thinks of that person in America who claims to be German, it’s very different. I think we’re all sort of a part of, like, a lost people almost — where we want to cling to a culture that isn’t ours anymore,” she replied.
Because Megan seemed close to her culture, I asked that, as an American, if she wishes she were closer to her ancestry.
“I suppose, but in no way that’s actually attainable outside of if I were to move to Ireland, but even then, I would be the other, I’d be an immigrant,” she said.
My good friend Jordyn, whose favorite soup is Italian wedding soup and eats soup up to once a week, was a little bit drunk when I interviewed her, so I know she was being honest.
“I would say soup is like liquid form and then you could obviously add stuff into it. Basically anything that’s in liquid form,” was Jordyn’s definition of soup, which seems to be very loose, though her figurative definition had more substance. “That warm, fuzzy feeling. For me, eating soup kind of takes me back to those memories of home and it’s kind of just that. I would compare it to a hug, like it’s kind of relieving in a sense. I feel like soup kind of feels like home, you know what I mean? Like when you’re sick and your mom makes you a big bowl of chicken noodle soup. It kind of feels homey and loving.”
I have known Jordyn for a few years as well, but knew little about the rest of her family.
“My mom always made us chicken noodle soup when we were sick and she makes chili quite often. After major holidays, my grandma would make ham and bean soup and we would have Italian wedding soup at every Christmas. My grandma had these giant, like, five course meals and the first course would always be Italian wedding soup,” she said, and later told me that the Italian wedding soup her grandma makes is a family recipe, different from others both due to the ingredients and the family aspect of it.
Jordyn did not stop there when talking about her grandma’s soup — I asked her if she had any associations with soup, and again, there was a grandmotherly anecdote.
“I really think about my like my grandma a lot, because again, she primarily made the soup in our family. I remember the [cafeteria] had Italian wedding soup once and I saw it and I’m like ‘I just need to try it.’ I just kind of associated the memories with my grandma,” she remembered not-so-fondly from the cafeteria at the university she attends. “It tasted like dish water.”
Soup is social for Jordyn, and she attributes it to her Italian ancestry.
“Especially coming from an Italian family, food in general has a social aspect for me. My grandparents on both sides came straight from Italy, so we still hold a lot of traditions and heritage,” she said.
Despite having such close connections with her culture, she is still aware of the impact life in America has had on families, including her own.
“I hear a lot of people who are like ‘Yeah, I’m not really sure where my family is from’ or ‘I’m not very close with my family’ and to me I’m like, I find that so interesting because it’s never been that case for me,” she said, which surprised me, as I am one of the people in which she is referencing. “My parents haven’t really gotten that experience that [my grandparents] did in Italy but, for example, even my grandpa — who came straight from Italy — he wanted to open up McDonald’s at one point, so obviously there’s some influence on our culture.”
Jordyn has a strong love for her grandma’s soup, so I asked her what soup means to her.
“I just kind of associate it with those home memories, so I think soup means family, but not in a sense of your blood family — like friends as well. Like Mels, for example, I would consider you family,” choosing your own family is a common topic today, something that drives many people to be better, so I was delighted to be considered an honorary Italian.
One of my professors, Dr. Cordaro, eats soup about once a week. Her favorite soup is a family recipe dubbed “magic soup.”
“It is what we Italians call a pasta fazool or a fazool. I actually don’t put pasta in mine so it’s not really a pasta fazool, but basically it’s like [five] ingredients. It’s got garlic, what’s called lacinato kale — it’s a very specific kind of kale, you don’t want your regular grocery store fluffy one — it’s like a long, skinny one and white kidney beans and salt. The best topping for it, which you don’t have to do, but kind of makes it like chicken soup for like Italian people, is you get a good high quality olive oil, garlic, and then you put that over low heat and it just sort of slowly fries and then you put that on top. That’s the whole recipe,” is what Dr. Cordaro says is the way to make the soup. “My friend calls it magic soup because she’s like ‘I don’t understand how it can taste so good and it has like five things in it’ and she tries to make it and, I don’t know, she can’t figure out how to make it.”
Based on the information about the magic soup, I wanted to know her definition of soup as a food and a concept.
“Soup has to be something that you can eat with a spoon that has a significant liquid component. Soup is something that, when you eat it, you are comforted. I don’t really follow recipes unless it’s something brand new that I’m trying — I usually just try to pay attention to how everything is going together, how it’s tasting, so it’s very down home, usually connected to something you had when you were a kid in some way; it’s comforting, it can actually make you feel better,” she said, a pretty consistent definition. “It’s liquid; you can eat it with a spoon; it makes you feel better, usually, and gives you a feeling of being taken care of.”
Dr. Cordaro had told me about her magic soup before — which is what led me to interview her — and she gave me a bit of history on it.
“The magic soup is actually based on a soup my mom used to make with pasta, so it’s basically like pasta fazool. She would just use whatever greens sometimes — escarole is a really popular one for Italians — and sometimes I’ll have that but this version is my version. She made hers with red kidney beans,” she said of the soup that has been in her life for a long time. “I have specific memories of when times throughout my childhood — like when I was a teenager when I was eating that soup and things were happening, I had that when they put the dog to sleep and I was so sad and it was just like ‘soup,’ because it was really easy to make.”
As I learned before with Jordyn, Italians see food as a social thing, so I asked Dr. Cordaro if the same was true for her.
“I live alone so I do a lot of cooking and eating by myself, which I actually really like because I can just do everything the way I want to do it, but of course it’s nice to go out or be with friends or make things for friends. At this point in my life, it’s like, when I’m feeling bad, I will go and make my soup and then feel better. Maybe someday it’ll be social again, but I would say it’s not as social as it used to be, but it’s okay,” she replied.
Dr. Cordaro was the only person of the people I interviewed that shared my routine of eating soup alone. She also is the only one who makes soup for the future when she knows she will not feel well.
“I’m not gonna feel very good and the nice thing about whether it’s the magic soup or other soups, usually it’s not about ‘I have to put a million ingredients in,’ it’s all about the preparation, so that’s very meditative for me,” she said. “You take garlic — like, a lot of it — and you sort of smash it a little bit and then you heat water up but you don’t boil it — if you boil it, it destroys the flavor of the garlic — and you keep layering in garlic flavor and then you put that aside and take the kale and you do a separate process with the kale, separate process with the beans, so it’s actually kind of complicated but not really, once you’ve done it. It’s kind of like a tea ceremony — once you’ve done it enough times you don’t think about it. So it’s kind of like, weirdly like, I think it’s kind of central to feeling good for me, at least, and kind of coming home and like being like ‘Okay everything’s gonna be okay’ and now you have the soup so you can heat it up tomorrow and you can just keep eating it.”
After hearing Dr. Cordaro mention being Italian a couple times, I asked if she felt close with her culture, to which she said yes, and it was due to the food. I also wanted to know if she had any closing remarks on soup, and she provided a very insightful answer.
“I think about my brother, for example, him and his wife and his two kids are the typical middle class family, where they’re just running all the time, their jobs are very, very busy and they do a lot of these meal kits and stuff like that. What are the kids learning about how to exist?” she asked, which is one of the questions of the universe. “This is something that helps you to exist, so I think it’s something that really ties people to culture and also to themselves, so I think it’s really important for every person to have a soup because there’s a reason why they call it like chicken soup for the soul. I think it actually is something that makes you feel like your soul has re-entered your body if you’re not feeling well, so it’s kind of, like, essential medicine and when people don’t have it, I’m like, ‘What is going on for that person?’”
Why soup?
Not to sound tacky, but the Merriam-Webster definition of soup is “a liquid food especially with a meat, fish, or vegetable stock as a base and often containing pieces of solid food.”
Seems like a pretty straightforward definition, right?
The Merriam-Webster definition is very close to the one given by the people I interviewed — liquid with solids — but lacks some of the other things mentioned, like eating it with a spoon, can be hot or cold, and sometimes is cereal.
Beyond the dictionary, though, soup is more than just bowl and spoon, broth and vegetables.
Most of the people I interviewed used the word “comfort” in association with the word ‘soup.’ Some even went as far to say that soup means ‘home.’ Jordyn, in particular, pointed out that soup “feels like a hug.” Four people at one university are not enough to speak for an entire population, but these kinds of occurrences are known to not be isolated.
Soup is a side effect of human existence —when something is so old, it is only natural. Regardless of your feelings on it, there is a certain ubiquitous nature to soup that makes people feel comfort, makes them feel home. I am not sure how many other universals there are for such feelings, and certainly not possessing the same versatility that soup does. Sure, give me a pizza and I will enjoy it, but give me soup and I will appreciate the way the chicken has just enough pepper on it that it is not tasteless, how the peas remind me of nights spent with my grandmother when I was a child, when the corn reminds me that I do not particularly care for corn but I like everything else enough to not complain. But maybe that’s just me.
Soup is everywhere, in almost every culture, if not all. It brings together our past and present. Even those who do not like soup likely have experience with the dish or have an earnest reason for disliking it.
Soup is love, love is soup
I have often heard the saying “I can never go home.” It means that once you leave home, you can never truly go back — things will never be as they once were, as you knew, as you loved. But then, what is home? By definition, it means the place we live or the town we were born in or wherever our immediate family resides. Metaphorically, we as a society seem to have agreed on the definition that home is…the place that makes us feel cozy, makes us feel happy, where our loved ones are, regardless of whether or not they are blood family, and makes us feel at peace. Denotations and connotations, actual meanings versus associated meanings.
What does soup have to do with home?
For most Americans, the United States is likely the only home we have ever had. The only culture we have ever known. Even those who are close to their culture feel as though they are lacking something, feeling as though there is a piece of them that they are never going to obtain in their wildest dreams. Megan said it best — the only way you can ever get closer to your culture is to go to your country of origin, and even then, you are going to be an immigrant, you are going to be the other. But first, that means that you have to have a country of origin. I know extremely little about my family — I know my great-grandparents came from Ireland. I know my father’s side of the family is Pennsylvania Dutch (whatever that means). I am never going to know anything beyond that, no matter how hard I look or try to force a culture onto myself, I am American through and through — striped of whatever remnants of Ireland were left of my grandparents, left with nothing more a love of corned beef and potatoes. Even from the small group of people I interviewed, I am not the only person who feels this way — Katie, too, is kind of Irish…maybe, and we certainly are not the only people in the country like this.
America is a spectrum of culture, claimed to be a melting pot, in reference to the millions of inhabitants of what feels like almost as many cultures. The modern day definition of America’s citizens can be said to be people who originate from all parts of the world and more or less come together to make up what we know as American society, with our meal kits and busy lifestyles and scarce time for loved ones.
America is a soup of culture, a little bit of everything mixed in, some parts more defined than others. But in those less defined areas, there is a loss of culture, and therefore, a loss of self. Even those who feel close with their culture, who have family straight from the source of their ancestry, are impacted by being American. A loss of self is a loss of purpose, missing meaning in life.
There are people out there that search their entire lives for the meaning of life, dedicate much more time than necessary thinking why are we here? and try to find an ultimate purpose for existence. I have seen it many times (and with increasing frequency), young people with worries such as these, who ask the questions “Am I a bad person? What if I never amount to anything in life? What if I’m not remembered?” to which I respond, “A bad person is not concerned about being good, all that matters is that you are trying to be better” along with “Shut up you’re literally 21 you have your entire life to figure something out” and, my personal favorite, “If everyone on Earth were to be remembered then that would be quite a bit of remembering to do.”
There is this fear that if you are not remembered, then your life had no meaning, no greater purpose than 70-something years of space taken up and resources used. There are 7.4 billion of us on this planet and we are all fighting for a chance to know ourselves, scavenging the depths of life, to the edge of the universe to figure out the meaning of it all.
Even when we do not know our culture, and therefore a part of ourselves, we know soup. When we know no meaning in life, we know soup. Human existence itself is a soup of sorts — we are but a multitude of experiences all added together to create what it means to be human. There are so many people who wonder what the meaning of life is, when they will find their purpose in life. The truth is, searching for purpose may prove to be fruitless, and waiting for a meaning to come along and fulfill someone in life may never happen. If you take the initiative to give your life meaning, if you say, “I have a purpose and it is to eat soup with my friends,” then it is impossible to look back on life and believe it to have been a waste. If you live your life with loved ones, the people you choose to be around, if you made your purpose to eat soup — as long as you had fun and loved as much as you could, then it will have all been worth it.
It is okay to not be extravagant or do wondrous things, it is alright to be in love with the simple things in life and still live a life of value and importance. Sometimes it feels like every single person alive is waiting for their grand moment, their time to shine, and they keep waiting, and waiting, and waiting for something that may never happen. But if you take a step back, realize that love is actually what is most important, that family — blood or not — matters most, and that you will likely die unremembered (harsh, but true), then you can live a life of less stress and more fulfillment.
Because “Love is what makes the world go around,” is it not?
Humans exist to love each other. One of the earliest signs of human compassion is healed bones; it is proof that we have always cared about one another to the point where we will let them heal; we will not leave others behind and quite literally throw them to the wolves. Somewhere along the way, this notion has been lost. Wars began, industries started to consume people’s lives and turned them into commodities rather than entities filled to the brim with love and compassion. We are meant for more than we make ourselves out to be — there is wonder to life beyond waking up in the morning and going to work and returning home for a lonely dinner and repeating until we die. We are meant create — to cook, to make soup, to feel empathy and love.
Maybe I am being pretentious, to say that love is real and soup will give you purpose in life. Perhaps I sound mad, rambling on and on about soup and meaning and love. But maybe, just maybe, I am right.
If you love your friends and who you consider family as much as you can, if you try to spend more time with them tomorrow than you did today, if you create soup with them or even alone and give yourself that purpose in life, things may start to make more sense.
Of course, reading this essay is not going to give you any epiphany or cure your depression (if it did, I could probably make a lot of money). Your opinions about life will not change overnight. But the next time you make soup, I would not be surprised if you think of what you have read here today. Perhaps a month from now, or even a year from now, you will be making soup and think of this — of how your purpose in life is to enjoy the simplicity of soup and the complexity of love.
So stew on this essay for a while, and while you’re at it, consider making some soup.
