The evolution of soup

“Do you still like cooking?” one of my kids asked. “Even though you do it every day?”

Maybe my expression had betrayed some impatience as I banged around pulling out pots and checking for ingredients. I like cooking, but there isn’t always the time or money to make fabulous meals.

Interestingly, those two weaknesses – time and cost – have been targeted by advertisers for at least a century and a half. Let’s begin by looking at a humble can of soup. There’s probably one in your kitchen right now. Your plans for that can say a lot about the times we live in and our culture’s approach to food.

In 1869, an ice-box manufacturer and a fruit seller went into business together. Joseph Campbell, the merchant, soon bought out his partner to run Campbell Soup Company – a venture so successful that the familiar red and white cans are now sold in 120 countries.

Napoleon, allegedly, was the first person to long for portable, imperishable foodstuffs for his troops in the 1830s. And while Campbell Co. did very well during both World Wars, its target audience was not soldiers but housewives, in the front lines of feeding large families. Early cans were marketed as inexpensive and time-saving. A curly, cursive font was designed to appeal to women.

Mass canning technology was developing just as Mr. Campbell invented condensed soup (to save on shipping costs) in 1897. This pairing enabled Campbell’s to expand significantly. It also helped when the U.S. Supreme Court designated the tomato as a vegetable “for trade purposes,” further boosting sales of the popular tomato soup. (Still a favourite all these years later!)

Helps for the Hostess, the first cookbook using soup in recipes, was published by Campbell’s in 1916. Condensed soup has been a casserole staple ever since. In the U.S., an astonishing one million cans are used in preparing meals each day. Soup now ranks after only meat and spices as the most common ingredient in cooking! Campbell Soup – a product designed by two men – changed the way women make food.

Counter-narratives
But I’m happy to report that this short history of canned soup includes some rebels. Four in particular come to mind. Out of necessity, practicality or theology, these women were and are not discouraged from the act of cooking by readily-available prepared food. Take note of these lessons, once so obvious but now almost forgotten.

First, soup can be made ahead of time. Both of my grandmothers, as young mothers immigrating to Canada in the 50s, served Dutch meatball soup every Sunday. Huge pots would be made on Saturday, full of finely diced vegetables and tiny, home-made meatballs that smelled of nutmeg, pepper and onions. The soup would be set on a back burner to heat up after church the next day.

Second, soup is not complicated. “Contemporary casserole recipes all seem to call for a can of soup,” Mennonite Doris Janzen Longacre lamented in 1976. “Will future cooks be born, live and die without knowing how to stir up a smooth white sauce? Will there finally only be three flavours – cream of mushroom, cream of chicken and cream of celery?” (More with Less, 117).

Her much-loved cookbook, now a kitchen classic, began as a guide for how to eat and spend 10 percent less in the “living faith” of the Mennonite tradition.

“Buy a wire whisk and break the mushroom soup cycle,” she suggests, by learning a simple white sauce recipe.

Third – and this is what Campbell’s counts on – soup is boring to make from scratch.

“Everyone wants a revolution,” Tish Harrison Warren says. “No one wants to do the dishes.”

But even boring tasks can be done in service to our Lord. In her recent book Liturgy of the Ordinary, Anglican priest Warren expounds on how the “small bits of our day are profoundly meaningful because they are the site of our worship. The crucible of our formation is in the monotony of our daily routines.”

Everything in life is touched with holiness, she says, even our daily routines. Even soup.

Do I still like cooking? Even though I do it every day?

Forget about the clock and the grocery bill.

Just begin with some water and finely-diced vegetables. Look at your whisk with new admiration! Make soup from scratch for someone you love.

Because one day, as Zechariah says, “all the pots and pans in all the kitchens of Jerusalem and Judah will be holy to God-of-the-Angel-Armies” (14:20, The Message).