# Soups



## maxiogee

Hiya folks,

Please let me start out by saying that this is not a research question, though it may look like one.

In a group of people I have recently met the topic of soup was raised. I was astonished to learn that most of them - nearly all under forty - have never made, nor seen anyone else make, a pot of soup. To them soup, if eaten at all, comes from a packet - or less often, a tin.

I couldn't imagine a "real dinner" in wintertime without a homemade soup to start it. More nourishing, cheaper to make and generally healthier for you than packeted soups or an exotic "starter" from some up-market supermarket, they can take little time or effort to prepare.

So, do my fellow forer@s partake of soup at all, and if you do, is it "real" or packet/tinned?


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## Antpax

Hi,

I am completely on the other side. I have never tried a soup from a packet or tin, so I cannot compare.

Quote: I couldn't imagine a "real dinner" in wintertime without  a homemade soup to start it"  I completely agree and not only in winter but in summer, spring, fall....

Cheers.

Ant.


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## LV4-26

My mother used to make vegetable soup. My grandmother used to make milk soup with tapioca especially for me because she knew I loved it.

Nowadays, we don't eat much soup, except in packet . Only, each time we eat pot au feu, we keep the broth and the leftover vegetables to cook a delicious soup.


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## natasha2000

I adore my mom's soup. Chicken, beef soup, but my favourite is pheasant or wild duck soup (my father is a hunter).

Unfortunately, here in Spain people make soups using other kinds of vegetables, so I cannot find all ingredients to make "the real one" (not mentioning the pheasant*). It is not so different, but it is not exactly "the real one". On the other hand, here my life is different, and I don't have as much time as I used to in my "old land", firstly because there, I worked at home, and here I go to work like everyone else. Secondly, I got a little bit lazy, and thirdly, I can afford to be lazy since there are a couple of brands that make real liquid soups that are quite ok. you only need to add noodles and that's it. But I still order a good pheasant soup when I go back to visit my family... And my mom always indulge me... 

*Not that you cannot find a pheasant here, but it is not like you can buy it in the supermarket, and besides, it is very expensive...


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## whattheflock

What? Mickey D's soups are not real soups? Who knew....
Good thing the wife still knows how to make soups *almost* from scratch. She doesn't know how to prepare the stock, so she's gotta take a running start from the bullion cubes or canned chicken broth, but after that it's all fresh from the market.
I especially enjoy the ox-tail soups in winter time. Those soups, my wife actually makes completely from scratch.
I think the cooking thingy is still a big part of the Hispanic (Mexican) culture. We are Hispanic (Mexican), so we were fed and raised with home-made meals, and still enjoy hand-, home-made meals at least a couple of times a week.


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## sound shift

Soup from a tin or a packet is not allowed into my house, but fortunately I have got time to make my own. I am particularly addicted to mercimek çorbası, a Turkish lentil soup, especially with chilli pepper flakes sprinkled on top.


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## Nunty

One of the real pleasures of monastic life is the freshly made from scratch (no cubes or packets here!) vegetable soup every single day of they year. Sometimes mixed veg, sometimes (in winter) potato-leek, sometimes French onion... Eat your heart out, people! 

Even before I was a nun, I had a stock pot at the back of the range, simmering away all winter. But then, I made my own bread and pickles too. Some people are just odd that way.

The _truly_ amazing thing that I have discovered in the monastery is that _not all homemade vegetable soup is delicious_. It turns out it is something that can be messed up just like other recipes. Depends who's cooking.


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## french4beth

I love soup!

Unfortunately, I don't always take the time to make soup from scratch (and generally rely on purchased broths as a starter). I occasionally use canned soup to start with, and go from there, adding my own ingredients. I agree, Tony, there's nothing like a hot bowl of soup in the winter!  I also used to puree all of the vegetables when my kids were very young - they didn't even realize they were _eating_ vegetables!

In the summer, I love gazpacho, and fruit soups are a cool, refreshing way to end a meal. 

I'm a soup-a-holic at heart.

In the fall, I love squash-based purees such as cream of pumpkin soup.

The best soups I've ever made were made without a recipe - that is, I grabbed whatever leftover meat was in the fridge (chicken, beef, etc.), cleaned out the vegetable bin (carrots, cabbage, celery, etc.) and the cupboard (root vegetables), maybe some pasta - delicious! I call this recipe _'refrigerator soup'_ - whatever is in the fridge goes in the pot!


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## natasha2000

One stupid question:
What is scratch?  

The only meaning of this word I know is that I scratch when it itches me...

Oh, I forgot all that wonderful vegetable cream soups I make in 5 min using my blender.... Then I guess I am not irreversebly lost.... My favourites are pumpkin and carrot soup. But I also like vicisoise, or squash cream soup with a spot of sour cream...


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## Agnès E.

From the first automn rain (roughly mid-September) to the first bright sun (roughly mid-April), we eat a vegetable soup about 5 diners a week. 
I never cook the same one twice, as I mix at least 5 different kinds of vegetable... and never have the same ones available in the fridge.
I cook a very thick soup that I mix (my children are not that enthusiastic about eating boiled bits of vegetable... something that Beth seems to have experienced, too!  ), and often throw an egg, or ham pieces before serving. Some other times I change for sausages, chicken or beaf meatballs... sometimes I add cheese, sometimes not.


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## Nunty

Natasha, "from scratch" means starting with actual ingredients, real food, not using pre-packaged instant things, as so many Americans (and others, I guess) are wont to do. Not a stupid question at all. Think how many people who are reading this thread are delighted that you asked it!


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## french4beth

Making something "_from scratch_" means that you are using all of your own ingredients - homemade food instead of buying it premade.

I found this explanation on the word-detective.com:


> The phrase comes from the lingo of 19th century sporting events, specifically the "scratch" drawn in the ground which served (and often still does) as the starting line of a foot race. A runner "starting from scratch" received no handicap or benefit -- whatever the contestant accomplished was due solely to his or her own efforts. So, too, is a cook baking a cake without the benefit of Betty Crocker or her ilk said to be making it "from scratch."


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## cuchuflete

I follow Beth's refrigerator soup customs...usually starting with
still warm leftovers.  I'll be roasting a chicken later today, and the skeleton, together with some skin and meat, will go into a large pot.  Carrots, celery, parsely and scallions from the garden will get things started.  If I'm too lazy to cook lunch or dinner tomorrow, I'll just add rice or lentils or barley, and the soup will have become a thick stew.   

I use packaged soups only for mixing with sour cream...onion dip with anchovies goes well on crackers.  Canned soups? Cream of mushroom from a tin is useful for some caseroles.

Making soup is easy, usually produces good flavor, and, as one of my sons says, "It's consoling."  That's especially true when I come in from splitting firewood, and feel frozen and tired.


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## moura

I was not very found of soups in my childhood, in particular one made of thin slices of carbagge (_caldo verde)_, almost always eated with lot of tears inside . Even today I think on that particular soup and can not dissociate it from tears (and also sopped hair- my Mum usually did it, the "day" of washing my hair, and we didn't use a drier). Well, this is the first thing that came to my mind when thinking of "soups".
when I learned to cook, long long after that, I gradually began to think of them with more optimistic eyes. But my hands didn't follow my enthusiasm. My soups were terrible, tasting almost to water and salt and a shy flavour of vegetables. Afterwards, I put myself at work and manage to kwow the hows and whats. My present soups are humbly good, made of lots of vegetables, olive oil, garlic and onions,  and even better when I can mingle a whole bunch of salted fresh corianders. But I still dislike that one of the thin slices


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## natasha2000

Nun-Translator said:


> Natasha, "from scratch" means starting with actual ingredients, real food, not using pre-packaged instant things, as so many Americans (and others, I guess) are wont to do. Not a stupid question at all. Think how many people who are reading this thread are delighted that you asked it!


 


french4beth said:


> Making something "_from scratch_" means that you are using all of your own ingredients - homemade food instead of buying it premade.
> 
> I found this explanation on the word-detective.com:


 
Thank you, both. Maybe I should make a suggestion for a new entry in WR diccionary, since there is nothing about soups in the entry "scratch"... 

Well... I would say I try to eat all "from scratch". 

I like vegetable soup with real pieces of vegetables, and I did it earlier, but it takes a lot of time to cut it all in small pieces, and besides since I discovered the marvellous effects of a blender.... It takes me 15 min to make a soup instead of earlier half an hour or 45 min... Depending on the quantinty of vegetables I have to cut...


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## french4beth

A note of caution when using a blender - don't put extremely hot soup into the blender unless you add a cooler liquid (think explosion! not much fun cleaning hot soup off of cabinets, counters, floor, ceiling...). Now, I either let the soup cool off a bit, or add stock or milk/half&half/cream and process the soup in smaller batches.


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## Poetic Device

I have had caned soup once and packet soup twice.  Personally, I abhore the tast of both and stick to home made soups.  As far as the packets are concerned, the only thing that my house uses them fo is for chip dip (mix the packet with sour cream).


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## LouisaB

moura said:


> I was not very found of soups in my childhood, in particular one made of thin slices of carbagge (_caldo verde)_, almost always eated with lot of tears inside . Even today I think on that particular soup and can not dissociate it from tears (and also sopped hair- my Mum usually did it, the "day" of washing my hair, and we didn't use a drier). Well, this is the first thing that came to my mind when thinking of "soups".
> when I learned to cook, long long after that, I gradually began to think of them with more optimistic eyes. But my hands didn't follow my enthusiasm. My soups were terrible, tasting almost to water and salt and a shy flavour of vegetables. Afterwards, I put myself at work and manage to kwow the hows and whats. My present soups are humbly good, made of lots of vegetables, olive oil, garlic and onions, and even better when I can mingle a whole bunch of salted fresh corianders. But I still dislike that one of the thin slices


 
I agree with Bilma. This is one of the best written and evocative posts I've ever read. 'A shy flavour of vegetables' is just beautiful!

But I've been feeling desperately deprived reading this thread. My mum never had time to make real soup, so it was always out of cans - and I liked it, probably responding early to the delights of monosodium glutamate. It wasn't until I married and did my own cooking that I realised the truth. I had something left over called 'chicken stock', didn't know what to do with it, and needed to produce another meal to eke out the household budget. So I actually read a recipe book and had a go, and while it was probably pretty dire, it was the first real soup I'd ever had - and now I make it all the time.

When I was badly ill a few years ago, and wanted that nostalgic 'home' feeling, I heated up a can of that old commercial soup I used to like so much. Unfortunately, it tasted like yellow slugs. 
(Or, at least, how I would imagine them to taste - you know, the pale yellow ones with orange feet).


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## Bonjules

What a great topic! 
I love talking about food, esp. soups.
How lucky we are that food is not on the no-no list (unspeakable, forbidden items like literature..)!
  The great thing about soups is that they are so easy to make and so easy to make tasty and just the warmth of them will give you such a 
rush when it's cold.
Vegetable soups, meat soups, chicken soup, there is no end!
Tried flour soup? Growing up with little food after WWII, you had to be inventive: Just roast the flour (can do it 'dry' if you want, but you need to stir it constantly) and add the water very gradually to avoid lumping. Sauteed onions always welcome, salt, spice - voila'! delicious.
We made bread soup also with dry bread -not bad at all.
Don't start with split pea soup, or I'll really start to cry..


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## Brioche

I occasionally make soup just like my mother did, by starting with a marrow bone [bovine femur] and boiling it to make the initial stock.
That takes quite a long time. Then I add diced carrots, parsnips and swedes [rutabagos]. If you use a mandoline it doesn't take too much effort to dice. I also put in sliced celery, plus pearl barley.  A sprinkling of parsley is added when served.  I would never put this soup in the blender.

I aslo make a pumpkin and sweet potato soup, which does go through the blender. I think that it tastes better if you roast the chopped pumpkin and
sweet potato.

The only packet soup I use is Chicken Noodle. However, I embelish it it considerably.  I add extra very thin noodles - capellini or similar - and when they are cooked, I add some diced cooked chicken, a tin of creamed corn and some chives. A few drops of dark sesame oil adds a nice "Chinese" flavour.  If you like you can swirl a beaten egg into the hot soup. This ends up as my version of Chicken and Sweet Corn Soup.


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## Chaska Ñawi

I grew up with an eternal soup pot on our stove and those of all the neighbours.  The flavour changed according to the leftovers of whatever happened to be for dinner that day.

I don't quite have the eternal soup pot these days, but we never eat anything with bones without making stock afterward.  The stock then either becomes soup or disappears into the freezer to appear another day.  We eat it at least once a week in the winter.  Usually I bake bread on Saturdays, and bread and a bowl of soup are a favourite weekend lunch or after-school snack with the kids.

I don't believe I've ever used a recipe.

Lest you think this picture a little idyllic, I need to confess that my husband buys canned soups .... he'll even pack them in the kids' lunches when there's already a soup pot on the stove.


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## mplsray

maxiogee said:


> Hiy
> I couldn't imagine a "real dinner" in wintertime without a homemade soup to start it. More nourishing, cheaper to make and generally healthier for you than packeted soups or an exotic "starter" from some up-market supermarket, they can take little time or effort to prepare.
> 
> So, do my fellow forer@s partake of soup at all, and if you do, is it "real" or packet/tinned?


 

I usually have soup from cans, on rare occasions make it from a powder, and sometimes make it from scratch--if, that is, you accept canned broth (or broth packaged in those boxes called "aseptic containers") as a suitable ingredient for a made-from-scratch soup. When I make a soup from scratch, it's usually beer-cheese soup, though on occasion I make French onion soup.


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## panjandrum

We make home-made soup at least once a week in winter (the veggies get eaten raw in summer).  Normal, a little richer with half milk instead of water, richer still with all milk, occasionally with cream.

Any set of veggies can be converted into delicious soup.

Well, I lied.
The soup I made this morning had too much curly kale and broccoli stalk.
The parsley soup I made once was a big mistake too.

But a good leek and potato soup, well flavoured, is almost pure heaven.

Absolute heaven is knoblauchcremesuppe.


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## Cath.S.

Welcome me to the home-made soup freaks club, and please love me for I, too, share the same ritual as you do: 

We eat home-made fresh vegetable soup basically every night during the cold season, my companion who is the house cook typically makes it from leeks, potatoes, turnips, adds some grated cheese, yummy,  sometimes we have pumpkin or onion soup, I sometimes (seldom ) make spicy exotic soup, like Thai and Vietnamese recipes.

We never ever buy packet soup, yikes! No way does it compare to the real thing!

For me the home-made soup habit goes back to very early childhood, I remember sitting as a kid in our steamy, brightly lit kitchen, smelling the delicious scents coming from the stove as wild winds and cold rain were raging outside.


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## beakman

Lovely and warm topic!
I love soups. No Russian couldn live without eating soups (it's considered the first course) and Russian cuisine has a great number of them. But the best, most delicious one I've found in Andalusia. It's called: "puchero" and it's a broth made of many ingredients: bones, hen/ turkey meat, stale (rancid? -not sure how to say it in English) bones and pork scratchings (rancio), "garbanzos" -chickpeas (not the same as in Russia), then celery, leek, carrots, potatoes, ...hope not foget anything. If the broth is well-done it has white colour. Normally, I prepare it once a week in a great pot (as Spanish women do) and then I devide it in small portions and put them in a freezer. That way any time we feel like having a tasty home-made soup we have it. Just a minute, forgot to say that there are several forms to vary the broth: depend on whether you are in a hurry. The simpliest way is to add noodles or rice and "hierba buena" (I don't know what its name in English, maybe mint grass?). You also can eat it as "sopa de picadillo" which is the same broth with added cured ham, hard-boiled egg, toasted/ fried bread. Taste it yourself (not forget to put "hierba buena" into the broth!), it's very good!


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## whattheflock

In Mexico we have something called yierbabuena, which is pretty much just plain peppermint. Could it be the same as beakman's "good-herb"?


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## Gianna_7

Making/eating soup can be a very therapeutic experience.  Perhaps it has something to do with all of the purging of items from the fridge/cupboards as so many of you also mentioned.  

I love all types of soup but my best soups usually involve leftover meat or a chicken carcass boiled with onion and garlic and long enough that the meat falls off the bones.  

I haven't developed a particular method for "stock" but hope to improve on my technique soon. Having moved recently and antcipating yet another upcoming move, I haven't been cooking from scratch as often.

I have to admit that I do like the soup-starters available in a box from the fancy grocery stores.  It allows me to spend a lot less time in the kitchen on busy days.   

Bonjules, I have to also admit that I do like split-pea soup, but I'm particular about how it's made and I love to add various Goya seasoning packets to  all my soups as well.  Is bouillon really "cheating?"  I confess that I add it to what I call soup "from scratch, " usually the chicken soup variety.

Typically, I keep a cookbook around to consult for new ideas and to make sure I don't get too "creative" with my cooking from time to time.


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## kaleidoscope

Just to offer a different opinion (among so many soup lovers), I have to admit that I really dislike any kind of soup, and have some terrible memories of being made to eat it as a child, most of which involve profuse vomiting.  
For me, it's the texture and the generally unpleasant mixture of ingredients that puts me off.
Having said that, the smell is usually okay.

(Possibly related: gravy also has the same effect on me).


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## moura

There is a legend in my country about a soup. I don't know if it is common in your countries. One day a man (I don't remember if he was a pilgrin) was hungry and knocked at a door. He asked the landlady if he could only have some water to eat his stone soup. The landlady was surprised but she attended his request. When the water was boiling, he put a small stone inside and said: "if only I had some a carbage leaf, the soup would be perfect." This request was also granted. "Uhm, almost perfect! But the ideal was just a little bone with a thin scrap of meat". No problem, a bone with the meat was provided. And then, while a delicious smell was rising from the pot, as if remembering then, he exclaimed, "Oh, if I only had a little sausage it would become divine!" And the same happened with salt, carrots, rice, beans, and all other sort of condiments till the most delicious soup was produced. I don't remember either the end of the legend, but I think that the man/pilgrin ate his soup, and kept the rock to the next soup. This recipe "stone soup" is served in several restaurants in a Portuguese town as a main attraction. Without stones in it


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## KaRiNe_Fr

Les traditionnelles comme la poireaux-pommes de terre sont un vrai délice, et sont encore pas mal cuisinées en France. Elle sont même appréciées des enfants : il suffit d'y ajouter quelques gouttes de lait et/ou une bonne dose de parmesan ou de gruyère râpé (voire les deux !   ). Hum... Certains ajoutent du vin rouge pour "faire chabrot" (pas pour les enfants !). Pourtant  amatrice de vin, je trouve ça détestable (au goût). De quoi gâcher une bonne soupe comme un bon vin...
Oops I just realized I typed all in French, sorry! But I'm too tired this evening to write in English!


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## cirrus

Please don't stress yourself over writing in French, we are a language forum after all!  

I am in the don't trouble me with your packets and tins of soup school. Often mine follow the automatic writing principle guided by what there is in the fridge plus various bases - root vegetables, onions, garlic, ginger, galingale.  

It is unusually warm and the mushrooms both in the park near my house and out in the country are going mad.  I have been rushing back to fry them in herbs and what doesn't get eaten straight away falls into the pot.

I am looking forward to the bean time of the year - a good way to make the drizzle that permeates the soul feel a little lighter in February.


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## la reine victoria

I am a soup-a-holic too. It began when I was a child. Very often, in the winter, my mother would make her famous Scotch Broth for Sunday lunch.

She placed a boiling fowl (an aged hen or cockerel), in an enormous saucepan of water and brought it to the boil. Meanwhile there was much chopping of onions, leeks, swede, turnips, potatoes - and grating of carrots. A whole cabbage was tied up with cotton, and oatmeal & onion stuffing was placed in a white cloth, tied at the neck.

When the time was right, the vegetables and stuffing were added along with pearl barley, yellow split peas and whole dried green peas.

Fat, from the chicken, was regularly skimmed off. The pot would simmer away all morning.

What a labour of love this was but my mother was all smiles because we always asked for second helpings of her delicious broth.

Then came the tender chicken, a portion of stuffing, some of the "soup cabbage", whole carrots, and potatoes (which she had cooked separately).

Simple fare, but the memories linger >insert "heavenly aroma" smiley<. Of course I learned how to make it by watching and helping. I used to serve it to my own family.

My favourite has to be leek and potato with red lentils, but I make a great variety of soups and it's a rare day when I don't have a "pot on the go". Ideal for snacking on during the day, and so wholesome and healthy.

PS: I always have to add freshly ground black pepper. Oh, and chopped parsley just before serving.  

PPS: Cream of celery, whizzed in the blender, and served with a drizzle of single cream and grated cheese, is gorgeous too.




LRV


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## KaRiNe_Fr

cirrus said:


> Please don't stress yourself over writing in French, we are a language forum after all!


C'est vrai ! Alors je me permets un autre petit mot en français, c'est une poésie apprise en CE1 je crois, et je serais d'ailleurs bien en peine de la traduire de toute façon... C'est de Maurice Fombeure, et ça s'appelle "La marmite". Je n'ai pas trouvé de lien officiel, mais je la sais par cœur depuis mon enfance. Je soupçonne que ceci a contribué à mon goût pour les bonnes soupes. 
Voici donc un petit extrait, le reste en PM si ça vous intéresse :
 _* La marmite de  Maurice Fombeure
​ ​ *_ Sur le feu, jaune et bleu,​ chante la grosse marmite​[...]​le feu lèche la marmite,​ sans bruit, et la soupe cuit.​ Et l’horloge va moins vite,​ elle écoute la marmite,​ la marmite au pot au feu.​


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## Chaska Ñawi

The stone soup fairy tale seems to be common all over Europe.  It reminds me of two other stories about soup:

In certain impoverished areas of the Italian coast, they used to actually make "stone soup", according to Claudia Roden.  Apparently they used to gather up stones that had a nice collection of limpets and other hangers-on to add some body to the stock.

Another cookbook mentioned that in rural Spain, the gypsies used to travel from village to village with ham bones... with strings attached to one end.  You could rent these soup bones from the gypsies for however long you wanted to flavour the soup.  One wonders whether the rates varied (surely they must have) according to the number of prior immersions.


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## charlie2

To a Chinese in the south, no meal can be called complete without a soup. A soup is never made from leftovers*. 
It is believed that one cannot be in good health without having a constant supply of good soup.
A soup is good if it is prepared in the proper way with the prescribed ingredients and in the correct season.
It is not just health. Soup also represents a woman's role in the family. Her care for her man/children is shown in the soup. If you look tired, people will ask you if you have not been drinking enough soup from your mother/wife/girlfriend. Not everyone has the luck of being taken care of by these lovely people. So sometimes we have soups in the restaurant served in portions just for one person. I heard that you can order this and have it delivered to your office, too. 
It is believed that one of the ways for a mistress to keep her man is giving him good soup all the time.
I read with interest how Brioche wrote about adding a Chinese touch in her soup. Sesame oil is rarely put into a Chinese soup, in the south at least. What does look Chinese to me is whipping an egg in a soup. In Chinese we have a term for it :蛋花, meaning flowers of an egg.
People in Hong Kong use packed chicken stock a lot, however, I gather. But it is not soup.

*except perhaps the bones of a roasted duck.


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## LouisaB

charlie2 said:


> Soup also represents a woman's role in the family.


 
Of course, you are joking!   

But there is truth in what you say.
Soup is what a woman earns by going out to work for sixteen hours a day.
Soup is what her husband has brought to him by his employees in his eight-hour office day, and then expects at home when he can drag himself away from the football on the television long enough.
Soup is what a woman throws over such a husband.
Soup is what a woman can reduce a man to in less than ten seconds and without so much as the help of a stock cube.
Soup is a very, very wonderful thing.

And I too am only joking...


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## Nunty

We have several sisters from the Ivory Coast in our monastery in Nazareth, from several different ethnicities or "people groups". In one of them, the ladle (used to serve soup, of course) is the symbol of womanhood. 

There is something very empowering in being the person who gives out the food. Why do you think that in Victorian England it was the _man_ who sat at the head of the table and carved the meat, the most important part of the meal... No woman would carve if there was a man around. 

Am _I_ only joking...


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## la reine victoria

Nun-Translator said:


> We have several sisters from the Ivory Coast in our monastery in Nazareth, from several different ethnicities or "people groups". In one of them, the ladle (used to serve soup, of course) is the symbol of womanhood.
> 
> There is something very empowering in being the person who gives out the food. Why do you think that in Victorian England it was the _man_ who sat at the head of the table and carved the meat, the most important part of the meal... No woman would carve if there was a man around.
> 
> Am _I_ only joking...


 


Of course not, dear Sister Claire Edith.

My Albert's skills with the carving knife are a sight to be seen!

Men provide the meat and women tend the vegetable plot and herb garden (from whence come all those lovely ingredients for soup).

Call me old-fashioned, but I'm happy to be living in the 19th century. 




LRV


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## la reine victoria

"Only the pure of heart can make a good soup." (Beethoven.)








LRV


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## Brioche

Nun-Translator said:


> We have several sisters from the Ivory Coast in our monastery in Nazareth, from several different ethnicities or "people groups". In one of them, the ladle (used to serve soup, of course) is the symbol of womanhood.
> 
> There is something very empowering in being the person who gives out the food. Why do you think that in Victorian England it was the _man_ who sat at the head of the table and carved the meat, the most important part of the meal... No woman would carve if there was a man around.
> 
> Am _I_ only joking...


 
In our house, pouring the tea was the mother's job.

In my mother's family it was considered unlucky for a second person to pour tea. Whoever poured the first cup, poured all the cups.


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## la reine victoria

Dear Brioche,

We have a saying in the UK about pouring tea - "Shall I be Mother?" -  which means that the volunteer pours tea for everyone.

Staying on topic, it was always Mother who dished out the soup with her ladle.




LRV


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## Cath.S.

Charlie, 


> Soup also represents a woman's role in the family.


 
Not in our family. 
My companion, master of heart-warming soups, is a man. But he is what La Reine Victoria said a good soup-maker ought to be: pure of heart.


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