Soup, One of the Oldest Cooked Foods Known to Man

Historians believe that people have been making soup since we started preparing food. Although that may seem outrageous (how would primitive men have cooked without pots?) soup is almost certainly one of the oldest cooked foods requiring the use of a pot.

Soup may have been discovered by accident if primitive men decided to boil water. Why heat water? There is no reason to do that for cooking if you know nothing about bacteria and how meat changes in texture and structure when heated and soaked at the same time.

It may be that people discovered animals accidentally cooked in hot springs or perhaps in small pools that were surrounded by blazing fires. At some point, someone figured out that boiling meat was a good thing. Or maybe they used water to soften vegetables and only thought to add meat many generations later.

In fact, cold soup is an ancient mode of "cooking". Today gourmet chefs prepare cold soups in a variety of styles. But before people knew that boiling food was important they may simply have used cold water to soften their food.

The art of soup-making is especially savored in central Europe. Soup is a simple kind of dish that virtually any farm or country garden can provide ingredients for. And once people learned how to make soup they would have quickly realized many of its benefits.

For example, people who have been ill and unable to eat solid food for a long time are usually fed on soup diets. Soup might have saved thousands of lives at Vilnius, Lithuania in 1812 when Napoleon abandoned the remnants of his Grande Armee there. Some historians speculate that the soldiers -- who had been starving during their long retreat from Moscow -- were unable to digest solid food, and so succumbed to yet another debilitating illness.

Soups are so commonplace we can buy dozens of different types in modern grocery stores. And soups are also very adaptable. Almost any type of food can be cooked in a basic soup stock, leading to interesting chicken noodle broth recipes that may include meat-alternatives.

Soup may be the easiest way to help starving populations around the world. Soups can be shipped out in both cans and boxes, with and without water. If a simple water purification system is available even in a refugee camp, soup can sustain a large population over a long period of time.

Soup also has a long literary tradition behind it. Many people have heard at least one variation of the traditional stone soup story, where a beggar or travelers or a group of hungry soldiers are turned away while asking for food but entice curious villagers to add ingredients to a pot of boiling water that starts out with nothing but a stone.

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