Chicken Soup, the Jewish Prozac
By: Mirah Curzer
Tags: Cooking, Family, Food, Judaism, Religion

The practice of making chicken soup for the sick is one of the most recognizable foodways of European Jews and their descendants. In fact, chicken soup is often called “Jewish penicillin,” and was recommended as a cure for the common cold in the medical writing of the twelfth-century philosopher Maimonides. Chicken soup is important because of its physical benefits as a folk remedy, its symbolism in thinking about the structure of the family, its role in defining familial and kinship roles in American Jewish homes, and its status as a means for making statements of identity in Diaspora Judaism.

As it turns out, chicken soup is measurably beneficial to people with colds. Because it is mostly water, it helps to hydrate sick people who have lost a lot of fluids during their illnesses. It is also very gentle on the stomach, so it is often the only form in which sick people can keep down nutrition. It is warm and soothing on a sore throat, and the steam that rises from a bowl of hot liquid such as soup helps to clear stuffed noses. But most importantly, recent studies have shown that chicken soup actually serves a very real medicinal purpose.

Recent studies have shown that chicken soup actually serves a very real medicinal purpose.

A group of researchers at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha found that chicken soup inhibits the movement of neutrophils, the white blood cells that are released in great numbers by viral infections and which stimulate the release of mucous leading to stuffy noses and coughs. The soup was shown to have a mild anti-inflammatory effect while having absolutely no negative effect on cells.

Historically, the medicinal effect of chicken soup was perhaps even stronger than it is today. In medieval Europe, the alternatives to chicken soup and other home remedies were doctors and apothecaries. The apothecaries charged exorbitant prices for powders that often contained useless and potentially poisonous elements. The doctors of the time — with their bleeding, leeches, and advice to abstain from bathing — killed more people than they cured. Add to that the discrimination against Jews at the time that probably made prices even higher for them, and the medical professions had rather little to offer. Chicken soup, on the other hand, used ingredients that were readily available and which could be used for other food as well. And no one has ever died from chicken soup.

As well as its medicinal effects, chicken soup was very cost-efficient as food in the shtetls of Eastern Europe. Chicken soup is essentially boiled poultry: the cheapest way of cooking the cheapest meat available. And why meat as opposed to just vegetables? Meat is a better source of protein, amino acids, and vitamins than anything except soy beans, which do not grow in Eastern Europe. And people who are sick need more nutrients than healthy people to facilitate their bodies’ healing process.

But of course, as well as its real medicinal properties, chicken soup also works via a process that researcher Stephen Rennard describes as “the TLC factor.” The comforting feeling of being taken care of comes from the fact that chicken soup falls on the culture side of the nature/culture divide. As Claude Levi-Strauss points out in “The Culinary Triangle,” boiled foods like soup are associated with culture because of the necessity of utensils for cooking and the distance from the fire. But chicken soup is also “good to think” because of its role in American fast food culture. Or more precisely, its lack of involvement in that culture. In modern America, there is a sharp dichotomy between home-cooked meals and fast food, with fast food being closer to culture because of its relationship to the workplace and to public places while home cooking is closer to nature because of its locus in the nuclear family unit. Chicken soup, with its very long preparation time, is deep in the home cooking category.

As well as its real medicinal properties, chicken soup also works via a process that researcher Stephen Rennard describes as “the TLC factor.”

Now it might seem odd that I just claimed that chicken soup is comforting because it is closer to culture (boiled) and that it is comforting because it is closer to nature (home cooked). However, the relevant dichotomy in this case is not so much between nature and culture as between personal and impersonal. Nature in its rawest form is extremely impersonal. People have neither names nor social structures, and they see others primarily as means to survival. The next step in cultural development is culture that centers on the family unit. Here people mitigate the harshness of nature with social structure. Later, the more natural nuclear family unit becomes personal in contrast to the hyper-culturalized capitalist/metropolitan world. Thus nature starts out as menacing and is redefined as comforting as cultural norms change in the direction of metropolitan capitalism.

When we look at chicken soup through the lens of personal versus impersonal, we find that it is almost as personal as possible. Chicken soup is most definitely an endo-cuisine, served almost exclusively to family members in the context of the home. In fact, it emphasizes the contrast between home and metropolis because it is served most often in cases where the eater is incapable of interacting with the wider world because of illness. It is also often served in cups to people in bed, as opposed to in bowls at the table. Once again, this marks the sharp distinction between kin and non-kin.

In fact, chicken soup sometimes literally signals acceptance into a kin group. For example, my best friend’s mother is the only person not related to me by blood who has made me chicken soup. It is no coincidence that I called her “Momma.”

Chicken soup is symbolic of being welcomed into a kin unit partially because it is an unusual use of a food category. Because of quantity requirements and other factors, soup tends to be a communal food. But in the case of chicken soup for sick people, it is made exclusively for one person. (Others might partake of the extra soup, but my point is that the impetus for making it comes from a single individual’s illness.) The preparation of a communal food for an individual is indicative of the effort put forth by a community in caring for the sick.

Earlier I mentioned that chicken soup takes a long time to cook, and the labor-intensive aspect of its preparation is yet another aspect of why it is reserved for close kin. It might be interesting to contrast this long preparation time with another Jewish food whose preparation time is symbolically short. Matzo, the “bread of affliction,” is cooked in eighteen minutes, while chicken soup, the food most associated with familial love and caring, can take anywhere from one to ten hours.

Despite all of the aspects of the soup itself, it seems that the time invested in its preparation is more important than anything else to its significance. There are many different facets to the practice of giving chicken soup to sick people. In my family, for example, my mother has only made me chicken soup once. It is not that she doesn’t love me or care for me or fuss over me absurd amounts when I’m sick; it’s just that she does so through a different medium. My mother is a physician, and when I was sick as a child, she would write me a prescription and run to the 24-hour pharmacy in the middle of the night. But this seemingly sterile form of caring for the sick took place amid the same level of fussing and pampering that usually accompanies the preparation of chicken soup.

This diversity in food practices that all fall under the category of chicken soup for the sick highlights another Jewish cultural aspect. One of the central ideas in American Judaism is the problem of the Diaspora: how to retain Jewish identity while adapting to new environments. As it turns out, chicken soup plays a surprisingly large role in changing Diaspora Jewish identity.

Chicken soup plays a surprisingly large role in changing Diaspora Jewish identity.

When Jews arrived in new places, they found the need to make statements to each other and to outsiders about what they chose to change and what they chose to preserve from their old homes. They made statements in the language of food. And chicken soup has been both changed and preserved. An overwhelming number of Jewish American families still have a family chicken soup recipe, but they are surprisingly diverse. My grandmother made spicy chicken gumbo, my friend’s grandmother makes chicken tortilla soup, another friend has a family recipe for hot and sour chicken soup, etc.

In all of these cases, although the recipes may differ wildly from each other, each family conceptualizes its recipe in the category of “my Jewish grandmother’s chicken soup.” Chicken soup is a prime example of Jewish cultural practices that adapted to new places while remaining distinctive.

Another interesting transformation of the concept of chicken soup is the Chicken Soup for the Soul phenomenon. Once a single book, it has expanded exponentially. And although chicken soup in the manifestation that I have been discussing can be safely said to have originated in the Jewish “Soul,” it has now spread to the Christian Soul, the Pet Lover’s Soul, the Mother’s Soul, the Golfer’s Soul, etc. Of course there could be no such thing as chicken soup for the soul in any literal way. But all of the important aspects of chicken soup, from its ability to cure illness to its role in solidifying kinship ties, retain their meaning even when totally divorced from the soup itself and taken exclusively as a concept.

Chicken soup’s role in the lives of people who eat it can be most aptly described by its ultra-personal characteristics. It defines kinship relationships and represents the time and special attention invested by family members in caring for the sick. It also highlights the problems faced by Diaspora Jews as they sort out what to assimilate and what to single out as sacred and unchanging.

While the people who cook it for their sick change the outward characteristics of their soup –its flavorings and come ingredients–all of the essential ingredients remain intact. Chicken soup, no matter how it is prepared, still represents the effort put forth to nurse the sick back to health and the emphasis placed on reinforcing kinship ties in the midst of an impersonal world.

In the end, chicken soup really is primarily for the soul.