A beautiful and useful thing, a bowl of soup presented in its simple, comforting form.
My kids have been ill recently, and they’ve not had the best appetite. “What do you want for dinner?” I ask. “No, not that, no, not this…”
Nothing appeals, until one of them suggests tinned tomato soup. Who else had tomato soup when they were sick and off school? With white bread cut into small squares to dunk in it. Or, maybe you would drink straight from the mug? One of those iconic soup bowl/mug hybrids with a recipe on the side?
Maybe a splosh of milk in the centre, to cool it down? Grated cheese melted in, only if you were feeling a wee bit better.
This is my ode to soup, not just the classic Heinz tomato soup, but others, too. Soup is such a rich tapestry of the food world. Broth, bisque, borscht, pho, consomme, bouillon – all branches of the magical root.
My true love of the soup world has only one contender. Tattie soup, made in THE soup pot. The pot that is only used for soup, not some pot of multi-usage.
The simplicity of the ingredients: stock (vegetable for me, but chicken for everyone else in the family), leeks, tatties, salt and black pepper. No meat for me, but sometimes a ham bone for the more carnivorous.
Tattie soup for all occasions
Tattie soup has those perfectly imperfect big chunks of potato, which my mum warns me to leave alone, as I’ve a tendency to steal half of them straight from the pot, still boiling hot. I don’t want your smooth, blended version of vegetable soup. I want it rustic, with plain bread (the heel will do), or half a morning roll to dip in.
Tattie soup is served before Christmas dinner, on Hogmanay, and at funerals. Always at funerals. I’d have it ladled out at weddings, too, if I could.
My next favourite soup is tomato and red lentil, with cumin and coriander. Easy peasy. I could live on that. Probably have, at some points. It’s not out of a tin, and it’s healthy, so it makes me feel virtuous and warm. Reminds me of Marseille.
Then minestrone. It’s the perfect meal in a bowl, with a generous dollop of parmesan on top. Reminiscent of traditional Italian restaurants in Soho in the 1990s – red, checked tablecloths, cheap but good-enough white wine, faded photos and old friends (some now gone).
Broth has always been ‘nourishing, restorative and comforting’
Broth. Chicken broth. I use vegan chicken broth these days, but it tastes the same.
Soup hand-delivered to a loved one in hospital, where the meals provided are heavy and tasteless. Soup is a saviour in our society
This never appealed after I gave up meat in 2016, but then I got Covid on the eve of the first lockdown and was so ill I couldn’t get out of bed. I survived on mugs of mock chicken broth, brought to me in bed by my children, tentatively sipped, no sides of bread or any other accoutrements. Only the basic broth itself, enough to help me just about function.
Broth is age-old, relied on for centuries for the sick and for the healing. Broth is described in medical manuals from hundreds of years ago as “nourishing, restorative, and comforting”. It certainly was for me.
I think of soup as a key source of nutrition, and as a culinary heroine, delivered in a flask during lockdown and left on the doorstep to avoid Covid transmission. This is a sign of care and love; a sign that community is surviving together.
When you have a newborn baby (or two, in my case) a gift of soup to heat quickly in the microwave, in those rare flashes of time when you can catch a minute’s breath. Soup hand-delivered to a loved one in hospital, where the meals provided are heavy and tasteless. Soup is a saviour in our society.
Is soup underappreciated? Not by me, that’s for sure.
My adventures (and ailments) in soup
I could list my adventures in soup, as well as my ailments. French onion soup – a thing of beauty, massively respected in its country of origin. Pasta in brodo – my Italian favourite – which reminds me of Bologna, busy bars and red stars.
And, of course, I must mention the most sustaining of soups: dahl, with extra lemon and even more lemon, too citrussy for anyone but me. It was the only thing I could stomach in the first trimester of my twin pregnancy, when rice smelled like mice and cheese smelled like a sewer to my hormone-maddened nose. I devoured the fragrant dahl soup by the bucketload.
So, here’s to soup, in all its humble and enriching forms. I still declare that the scent of freshly cooked tattie soup, drifting from the old broth pot, as you open a loved one’s front door is the most welcoming smell in the world.
Donna McLean is originally from Ayrshire and is a mum of twins, writer and activist
Conversation