Overview
Throughout history and around the world, soup has been used to bring comfort, warmth, and good health. A bowl of soup can symbolize so much—celebrations, major life passages, and the everyday. Inspired by Patricia Solley’s website, SoupSong.com, and organized according to function—soups to heal the sick, recover from childbirth, soothe a hangover, entice the object of your affection, and mark special occasions and holidays—An Exaltation of Soups showcases more than a hundred of the best soup recipes of all time, including:
• Festive Wedding Soup with Meatballs from Italy
• Egyptian Fava Bean Soup, made to give strength to convalescents
• Creamy Fennel Soup with Shallots and Orange Spice from Catalonia—perfect for wooing a lover
• Hungarian “Night Owl” Soup, designed to chase a hangover
• Spicy Pumpkin and Split Pea Soup from Morocco, served to celebrate Rosh Hashanah
• Tanzanian Creamy Coconut-Banana Soup for Kwanzaa
Spiced with soup riddles, soup proverbs, soup poetry, and informative sidebars about the lore and legends of soup through the ages, An Exaltation of Soups is a steaming bowl of goodness that is sure to satisfy.
Synopsis
Throughout history and around the world, soup has been used to bring comfort, warmth, and good health. A bowl of soup can symbolize so much—celebrations, major life passages, and the everyday. Inspired by Patricia Solley’s website, SoupSong.com, and organized according to function—soups to heal the sick, recover from childbirth, soothe a hangover, entice the object of your affection, and mark special occasions and holidays—An Exaltation of Soups showcases more than a hundred of the best soup recipes of all time, including:
• Festive Wedding Soup with Meatballs from Italy
• Egyptian Fava Bean Soup, made to give strength to convalescents
• Creamy Fennel Soup with Shallots and Orange Spice from Catalonia—perfect for wooing a lover
• Hungarian “Night Owl” Soup, designed to chase a hangover
• Spicy Pumpkin and Split Pea Soup from Morocco, served to celebrate Rosh Hashanah
• Tanzanian Creamy Coconut-Banana Soup for Kwanzaa
Spiced with soup riddles, soup proverbs, soup poetry, and informative sidebars about the lore and legends of soup through the ages, An Exaltation of Soups is a steaming bowl of goodness that is sure to satisfy.
Publishers Weekly
Solley's passionate compendium of history, folklore, literary references and recipes collects tidbits about and recipes for soup from all over the world. The author, who runs the SoupSong.com Web site, shares proverbs and quotes about soup's famed comforting qualities, and recipes for stocks, which are the foundation of all soups. She looks at the role soups can play in life's key moments: e.g., French "Boiled Water" Garlic Soup is traditionally served to convalescing new mothers; Guatemalan Lamb Soup with Tamales, with its robust, meaty content, is reserved for weddings and other fancy occasions; and Irish Cottage Broth for the Wake is "enough to bring the dead back to life." Next come "soups of purpose," that is, ones that supposedly assist in weight loss (Cabbage Soup), appetite stimulation (Creamy Crab and Cognac Soup) and healing (Fava Bean Soup from Egypt). There are also recipes to foster love (Lobster Sweetheart Soup) or cure a hangover (Beer Soup from Denmark). The clear and generally simple recipes are enhanced by informative and descriptive head notes; sidebars on such topics as the use of almonds as an aphrodisiac or the history of Japanese soy sauce; literary quotations and extracts; and personal stories. (Dec.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.