ARE YOU A CHICKEN SOUPER?

It’s cold outside. Get rid of the chill with a cup of chicken soup. Maybe you have a cold? Cure it with a cup of chicken soup. Or maybe it’s a holiday, dinner with friends, or a craving for comfort food? Nothing beats chicken soup.

How can something so simple have such a colorful history?

Picture this. You’re a Neanderthal. It’s a frigid winter. Everyone huddles around the fire in the family cave. You shiver beneath heavy animal-skin blankets. Suddenly Mom smiles.

“Chicken soup anyone?”

Your family cheers. She goes to the back of the cave and retrieves a pop-top can of Campbell’s Chicken Noodle Soup. Mom pours it into a skin bag over the fire, waits for it to boil, and then ladles it into Amazon chicken-shaped soup mugs.

Mixed metaphors? Time travel? A new Disney movie? Your call.

There are thousands of years between Neanderthal chicken soup and Campbell’s but the idea is basically the same. Boil the bird, add some veggies, and you have something that’s healthy, warm, and tastes great. With over 26 billion chickens in the world today, almost every culture has its version.

According to author Jean Louis in The Chicken Soup Manifesto, “Chicken soup is a culinary connection shared around the world. We express our cultures, feed our nations and convey our most treasured flavors through this delicious and humble soup.”

There are so many versions, like my favorite Jewish Penicillin – a traditional Ashkenazi (Eastern European) soup usually served with matzoh balls, noodles, or kreplach. In Indonesia you might sip sayur sop; Peru uses cilantro in aguadito de pollo, or try the many types of Philippine sopa.  They all add different ingredients to basic chicken soup.

From the Neanderthals to instant  powdered Cup-a-Soup, chicken soup has probably been around since humans discovered cooking.

Let’s start at the beginning.

It began with boiling. Sarah Zielinski wrote in The Salt that John Speth, Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at University of Michigan, noted that all you need to boil is a “waterproof container suspended over a fire.”

Speth speculated that it began with Neanderthals boiling meat to get fat from animal bones. The result was a broth that they probably drank as soup. That’s over 350,000 years ago. Who knows exactly what “meat” they used, although many believe that hippopotamus was among the first.

Food historians noted that chickens were domesticated over 8000 years ago in Southeast Asia, eventually spreading to China, India, and the rest of the world.

The first record of chicken soup came from China in the second century B.C., over 2,000 years ago. They had more than ten different kinds. Many Chinese still give chicken soup to the elderly and pregnant women because they believe it improves energy.

The ancient Greeks also believed chicken soup had healing properties. Today’s avgolemono (Greek lemon-chicken soup) is a modern version, made with egg, rice, and lemon.

The ancient Greek doctor, considered the “Father of Modern Medicine” supposedly invented a soup that is still popular today – the Hippocrates Soup. He believed that it could heal and nourish people suffering from disease. Pedanius Dioscorides agreed. He was a Greek doctor who served under Roman Emperor Nero. Dioscorides was known as “The Father of Pharmacology” after he wrote a 5-book set  in the year 77, strongly promoting chicken soup as therapy.

By the twelfth century, Jewish physician Moses Maimonides started a global chicken-soup-as-medicine movement with his book, On the Cause of Symptoms (see below). Leah Koenig, wrote in My Jewish Learning, that Maimonides “recommended the broth of hens and other fowl to ‘neutralize body constitution.’  Maimonides maintained that chicken soup also helped leprosy, asthma, people recovering from illness, chronic fevers, and coughs.

In other words, Jewish penicillin. Who could deny it?

Centuries later, a revolution occurred in chicken soup.

In 1869, Joseph Campbell formed the company, Anderson & Campbell in Camden, New Jersey. Arthur Dorrance took over when Campbell retired. He kept the name.

Dr. John T. Dorrance, Arthur’s nephew, invented the process of condensing and canning soups. The first “red & white” Campbell’s soup can was a consommé, debuting in 1898. It wasn’t long before the name was changed to the Campbell Soup Company.

Radio ads screeched out the product in a jingle that probably still rings in your head:

M’m! M’m! Good!

With great advertising, acquisitions of other companies, skilled marketing, and Andy Warhol’s painting of the can in 1962, Campbell’s Soup became an American icon. Since then, other Campbell products fill supermarkets, like different soup flavors, Goldfish (snacking crackers), V8 juice, Pepperidge Farm, pasta sauces . . . so many that they changed their name to The Campbell’s Co.

Macrotrends reported that the company’s net worth today is $11.42 billion.

Whether Neanderthal or global citizen, you’re probably a souper. In America alone, people eat more than 10 billion bowls of soup a year!

Drink up, slurp, or sip – you’re in great company.