What's more soothing than something simmering on the stove for hours at a time and saturating the air with the fragrant smells of vegetables?
It's hard to top homemade soup – practically the definition of comfort, the meaning of love.
"I think that psychologically, there's an unconscious connection to infancy, to the feeling that you received this warm liquid nutrition from your mom and you didn't even need to chew it," says food historian Francine Segan. "It really reminds you of that wonderful comfort that needs no fork, knife or teeth."
Soup dates back to the beginning of cooking, when people noticed fat and other nutrients falling off meat being roasted over an open fire, Segan says. Archaeologists have discovered vessels dating back to prehistoric times, capable of holding water, meat and fibrous root vegetables that would soften during boiling.
"(Soup) reaches across every culture and every time period," Segan says. "You see it everywhere – the Mayans, the Native Americans, the Japanese, the Chinese, in Africa – all cultures, all time periods have some form of soup."
Soup became a staple of the European diet during the Dark Ages, according to Maguelonne Toussaint-Samat's "History of Food" (Blackwell Publishing, $32.95, 824 pages). It started as a slice of bread at the bottom of a bowl with broth or soup poured on top – hence the word "soup," which comes from "sop" or "sup," the book says.
Daniel Pont, chef and owner of Sacramento's La Bonne Soupe Café, grew up in France eating soup daily for lunch and dinner, always made from the vegetables in his mother's garden.
"If you don't have soup, how are you going to get all your vitamins? Americans don't eat enough vegetables," he says, decrying problems caused by a lack of fiber in the typical U.S. diet. "People shouldn't be in line at the pharmacy; they should be in line here."
Just before 7 a.m. on weekdays, the smell of boiling onions and leeks wafts from the cheery downtown Sacramento lunch spot as Pont prepares his four daily soups. He starts with his French onion soup, then moves on to a vegetable soup. Then he makes two other soups from whatever vegetables looked fresh that morning at the Raley's near his home in Natomas. It could be pumpkin, cauliflower or bok choy. Perhaps it's asparagus, mushrooms or corn.
"Everybody in my family ... nobody died before turning 90 years old," says Pont, 70, who used to own La Maison, a respected white-tablecloth establishment in Castro Valley, before semi-retiring to Sacramento. "Whether it's soup or not, I don't know, but I think it has a lot to do with it."
Pont sometimes sells out of his soups, which he purées in a hand-cranked food mill. Diners who miss out (usually after noon) still line up for his made-to-order sandwiches such as brie and prosciutto, braised pork, or smoked salmon with balsamic crème fraîche. They also come for his lilting French-accented English and tidbits of wisdom, such as the two most important things in life: the food in your stomach and the shoes on your feet, he says.
While many cultures have soup year-round with every meal, it is most recognized in the United States when the weather turns cold, says Carolyn Kumpe, chef at East Bay Restaurant Supply, which offers cooking classes to the public, including one on soups.
"When the cooler autumn temperatures settle in, soup makes a perfect meal," Kumpe says. "It warms the body from the inside out."
Soup also has the power to reach into the past, to bring back memories of our childhoods and the people in them.
Cris McKone, a cooking instructor at the Sacramento Natural Foods Co-op, nursed childhood colds by slurping her mother's homemade chicken soup. She continues the tradition with her own kids – making them chicken soup thickened with miniature pasta.
And good soup starts with a homemade stock, McKone says.
"People think it's some big mystery, but it's easy to do. Just use a package of chicken wings because of the high proportion of bones to meat," she says.
"A good soup is as good as the stock that you use to make it."
Call The Bee's Gina Kim, (916) 321-1228.
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