Whether it’s summers in Cyprus, the homesick halls of university accommodation, or a grandmother in The Bahamas with a taste for sheep tongue souse, chicken soup has always been a reminder of home. Get ready to warm your hands and your hearts as Marina Rabin, Mariam Aziz, Maya Glantz, and Nasia Colebrooke serve up their favourite family recipes.

Birthday wishes are in order for Campbell’s chicken soup, which turns 90 this year. First sold in 1934 as Campbell’s condensed ‘Chicken with Noodle Soup’, it has since become a store-cupboard staple, outselling all of its canned soup cousins by shifting over 250 million cans every year in the US alone. It’s also become a cultural cornerstone of an image of American domestic bliss, thanks in no small part to Warhol’s artistic 1968 immortalisation of this household favourite. 

What Campbell’s tapped into, canned, and sold, was a dependable shortcut to a centuries-old, cross-cultural culinary tradition: the comforting, healing power of chicken soup. Ancient Chinese references to chicken soup’s yang warming, medicinal qualities can be found in the Huangdi Neijing, the fundamental doctrine for Chinese medicine from the second century BC. Today, it’s a staple of Jewish cooking to serve chicken soup with matzo balls – this can be traced to 1135 and Maimonides, a mediaeval Spanish rabbi and physician. Maimonides recommended chicken soup as both a treatment for leprosy and in rectifying “corrupted humours” in his extensive writing on the soup’s medicinal benefit. 

Though research into whether chicken soup’s potency is placebo or proven scientific fact is somewhat inconclusive, its effect is undeniably powerful. So, through four different cultural backgrounds, we explore the warm associations with what is probably the most common cross-cultural comfort food.

My mum’s Greek Avgolemono – Marina Rabin

When my sister, the first-born, called my mum from her university halls to tell her she was sick, my mum immediately transferred the precise money (to the penny) so that she could buy a chicken to make soup. When I, the youngest of three, called to tell her I was sick, she told me there was nothing she could do, due to my inconvenient vegetarianism. Then she hung up the phone. 

Despite now not having lived in Cyprus for four decades, my mum subscribes to all the best Greek-Cypriot stereotypes. She’s a feeder, and she cares through food. She’s continued to nurture herself and her children well into adulthood, through her island of birth.

“seeing the assigned ‘chicken soup pot’ on the stove is enough to make me feel nurtured, comforted, and held”

This is best distilled in her Avgolemono, a Greek chicken soup. There’d always be a batch of soup somewhere in the house – in the freezer, on the hob, in its raw components on my mum’s shopping list when she realised in a panic that supplies were running dry. “Nothing can’t be fixed by sun and sea,” my mum’s aunt in Cyprus would always say to her, and her to us. In absence of this, chicken soup was a way for her to transport the ayurvedic comforts of Cyprus into our house in grey west London – closer to the Thames than the Med.

Admittedly, I have only ingested memories of chicken soup from the first decade of my life, thanks to my aforementioned vegetarianism. But coming home into a cloud of its smell circulating around the kitchen and seeing the assigned ‘chicken soup pot’ on the stove is enough to make me feel nurtured, comforted, and held. It warms me in a way that is only otherwise mimicked when, miles from my mum, I hear strangers speaking Greek, or in the of smell of the earthy, hot Cypriot soil that hits you as soon as you exit the plane. 

Cypriot food, cooking, and comfort are so intertwined in the strands of my mum’s DNA that getting her to describe her methods is difficult: “I don’t know how to explain it to you, I just do it!” bemoans the accidental recipe gatekeeper. 

But from what I can glean, her method is as follows:

1. Boil the chicken with onion, carrot, and celery (portions unclear – assume Cypriot over-catering numbers so divide by four for the average person). Boil for at least two hours, but the longer you boil the chicken, the deeper the flavour – about seven hours is the sweet stuff.

2. When the chicken is cooked, take it, and the vegetables, out of the stock. If you’re my mum, then feed large segments of the chicken to the expectant terrier at your feet. Even the dog benefits from chicken soup’s healing powers when I don’t. 

3. Whisk a couple of eggs – eggs are one half, along with the lemons, of what makes this Avgolemono distinctive from other, perhaps more purist, chicken soups. 

4. This instruction is, I’m afraid, verbatim: “Add some lemon at some point.”

5. Ladle out the hot stock into the eggs slowly, so it doesn’t curdle. Put in enough to bring up the eggs’ temperature. When hot, add them into the chicken stock.

6. Serve with rice, which you have cooked in the chicken stock, too. Or cook the rice separately, then add it in. Another point my mum was unclear on. 

Recently, my family has needed chicken soup a little more than usual. 

Roles have been reversed, and it’s hard to know how to nurture my mum. I’m struggling to try to learn this language of care she’s so masterfully commanded. She knows this, her selflessness knowing no bounds – chicken soup has become an unspoken signifier saving us from difficult conversations. When I see she’s put chicken soup on the hob, I don’t need to ask her what kind of day she’s had.  

Mama’s chicken soup – Mariam Aziz

Not many people are brave enough to call soup one of their favourite foods. These people obviously haven’t tried my mother’s chicken soup. 

In the dreary London wintertime, I’d walk home from school with a sniffling nose and scratchy throat, and at least twice a month, I’d be welcomed with foggy windows and a large pot simmering over the stove. Instantly, I knew my mum was making her famous chicken soup. 

Originally her sister-in-law’s recipe, the soup meshes together influences from Pakistan and China. It’s essentially a combination of a Pakistani chicken broth, called yakhnee, and an egg drop soup, which is a common Chinese dish. 

It starts off as a simple chicken broth, made by boiling an entire chicken – here, the bones and cartilage are vital in bringing out that warm and rich flavour. Then, key elements like the hearty winter vegetables – a handful of cabbage and carrots – are shredded and added back into the broth along with the boiled chicken.

Despite being influenced by such rich cuisines, there aren’t many seasonings added aside from Chinese salt, a heap of crushed black pepper, a few glugs of gluten-free soy sauce (light soy sauce is fine – we’re coeliac), and Maggi’s hot chilli sauce courtesy of our local Pakistani corner shop. Finally, a beaten egg and a cornflour slurry are poured in whilst stirring the pot. 

To garnish, it’s absolutely vital to add a simple vinegar and chilli powder concoction. A couple of teaspoons drizzled on top, to give the soup the tart and spicy flavour it’s missing. Having it piping hot is mandatory in helping flush out all those ‘under-the-weather’ symptoms that would always creep up. 

Ingredients:

One whole chicken (skin is optional)

White cabbage

Two small carrots (or one large carrot) 

Chinese salt 

Salt and crushed black pepper 

Soy Sauce 

Maggi’s hot chilli sauce 

Cornflour

One Egg

Optional:

White vinegar

Red chilli powder

My Jewish mum’s chicken soup – Maya Glantz

To think of home, family, and comfort is for me to think of chicken soup. And to eat chicken soup is to be immediately transported back home. Growing up, the scent marked the end of the working week – building in intensity from when my mother would first set it on the stove on a Wednesday evening, to when it was finally served at Friday’s Shabbat dinner – ladling up bowls of steaming hot, rich, golden broth. 

My mother quickly became known for her chicken soup, legendary in the Friday night dinner circuit. Her recipe has evolved and adapted over time, switching out a whole chicken in favour of solely using wings. I’d love to claim the recipe has been in the family for generations, travelling from the Polish shtetl to the suburbs of north-west London, but the reality is slightly less romantic. Unlike me, my mother was not raised in a household saturated with the delights of a home-cooked meal, and when she entered married life, she felt ill-equipped for the culinary responsibilities expected of a Jewish mother. Clearly, she was not alone in this struggle, as she quickly found a class dedicated to teaching newly married women the staple dishes of Jewish tradition – an obvious marker of the era.

Over time, chicken soup became a staple far beyond the Shabbat table. A spare emergency batch was stored in the freezer at all times, saved for inevitable bouts of winter illness.

It was my mother’s saving grace during my sisters’ adolescence, when they would refuse to eat breakfast before school. In true Jewish mother style, refusing to let her children leave the house with an empty stomach, chicken soup would be waiting on the stove at 8am. 

At times, chicken soup has acted as a substitute for home. As a child, I watched my mum fill up Tupperwares to bring to my dad while in hospital. More recently, it was the first thing I’d make when pangs of homesickness set in at university. 

As I trudged through Sainsbury’s, her voice rang through my ears. The importance of the stock used (it had to be Osem), the correct cut of chicken to use for ultimate richness (its wings), and her secret tricks for the most golden soup (adding in a tomato halfway through). 

The process required me spending much more time than desirable standing in my shared university halls kitchen – covering the wings in water and leaving them to boil for several hours, intermittently hovering over the bubbling pot, skimming off the murky debris that rises to the top. 

Eventually, the carrots, onions, parsnips, and swede would join the wings, along with a few cubes of the hyper-specific stock brand my mother is so partial to. It’s around this time that the rich aroma would begin to fill the room, floating through the corridors and mingling with the constant stench of alcohol and blocked toilets so familiar to first-year students. 

“chicken soup would be waiting on the stove at 8am” 

Once a few more painful hours passed, teased by the temptation of the memory-evoking scent, it was time to add the final ingredient – a single tomato. It’s then another waiting game. Patience is rewarded with flavour, and if I could make it through the night, I’ll reap the benefits with the richest, most golden soup the next morning. 

The process not yet done, I would move on to the careful manoeuvre of straining the soup, leaving only the stock and the carrots. Then, at last, the dish was ready to be served, ladled over a base of thin egg noodles known as lokshen, and most crucially, completely covered in the tiny fluorescent yellow croutons, lovingly referred to in my household as “bits”. 

However, despite her careful and exact instructions, I’ve never been able to make a batch that comes anywhere close to my mother’s.

Grammy’s Chicken Souse – Nasia Colebrooke

Growing up on the tiny island of New Providence in The Bahamas, as the second youngest in a house of seven, I thought my Grammy was a superhero. The kitchen was where she reigned supreme. Every evening, she would come home from work as a secretary and walk straight to the stove to start making dinner, not even changing out of her hosiery. Within minutes, the entire house would be filled with an aromatic blend of whatever herbs, spices, starches, veggies, and meat she concocted – a nonverbal cue that always signalled dinner was ready.

But even superheroes need a rest day. For us, it was soup day, since soup didn’t take as much effort as any other meal that had to be fried, baked, or accompanied with sides. So, on a random Thursday or Sunday, my Grammy would instead whip up a big ol’ pot of chicken souse.

Souse, a clear broth seasoned with lime, is traditionally known in The Bahamas as a breakfast food, although it has evolved into its own meal that can be eaten at any time of day. It is also almost exclusively served with Johnny Cake (a buttery-soft plain dough dunked in broth or eaten on its own with butter or jam). 

“a huge iron pot bubbled on the stove with thrice-scalded chicken wings and drumlets, waiting to be drenched with a zesty broth” 

Although chicken souse has a really mild aroma, its flavour profile is where it shines. I always knew we were in for a treat whenever I would walk into the kitchen and see heaps of freshly diced carrots, potatoes, onions, red peppers, and limes lined off along the table, while a huge iron pot bubbled on the stove with thrice-scalded chicken wings and drumlets (mini drumsticks) waiting to be drenched with a zesty broth. 

I couldn’t wait to grab the biggest bowl and two slices of bread, cut diagonally to make four and slathered in melted butter whose taste was only enhanced by the piping hot clear broth. With every spoonful, there would be a random allspice seed and bay leaf, which I would always politely pour back into the bowl. 

Growing up on a tiny island, I lived life in a bubble, thinking my grandmother was the be-all and end-all of the food she made us. It wasn’t until I became an adult that I realised this simple yet delicious recipe we call souse was, one, a national dish that I could buy from local restaurants and, two, an actual soup. 

The latter is because to Bahamians, ‘soup’ means a thicker, browner, and denser consistency, loaded with red meat, seafood, dumplings, corn, potatoes, carrots, onions, and lots more seasonings and spices than just lime. However, when I made my first pot just three weeks ago for my UK/non-Bahamian classmates and found myself having to describe what souse is, I realised for the first time in my life that this simple dish with an exotic-sounding name was just chicken noodle soup without the noodles, seasoned with lime to taste. 

Now, looking back, nearly seven years after she departed, as simple as the recipe may be, I’ve found that what makes Grammy’s chicken souse so special is that she never even liked it. She simply cooked it because her children and grandchildren loved it. She preferred pig’s feet or sheep tongue souse instead. And what’s more – so do I! But this is a testament to the best ingredient she put into every meal she made for us – love.