Traditionally, chicken soup has been considered the de facto cure-all. But Alon Shaya believes that tomato soup, dotted with plump grains of rice, registers even higher on the comfort scale. The acclaimed New Orleans-based chef, whose most recent opening is Miss River in the Four Seasons, addressed the issue in his 2018 cookbook, Shaya, An Odyssey of Food, My Journey Back to Israel: A Cookbook (Knopf; $35).
This is a food with a long history of comfort; no less an expert than Campbell Soup Co. traces its roots back to 20,000 B.C., the approximate date of a soup bowl found in China. (The pottery fragments had scorch marks on them, a sign that the soup had been hot.)
More recently, the aura of nourishment and convenience that soup provides was spotlighted during the Covid-19 pandemic. In the fourth quarter of 2020, Campbell’s sales rose 52% compared to the previous year, though they have since retreated closer to pre-pandemic levels.
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