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This episode is brought to you by Artistic Ends. Tonight, we'll read the chapter on soup from The Feasts of Autolicus by Elizabeth Robbins' panel, in which panel draws from her experiences as a food critic and S.A.S. to explore the role of soup in culinary culture. Snewscast first read this back in 2020. An American writer who lived much of her life in Europe, Penel was known for her travel writing and gastronomic studies, often blending personal observations with cultural critique. Her perspective reflects a deep familiarity with both English and French cuisines, informed by her broader interest in art and domestic life. Let's get cozy. Close your eyes. your body into the softness of your bed.

Now take a few deep breaths. On soup. When all around, the wind doth blow, draw close the curtains, build up a roaring fire, lamp and candles. and begin your dinner with a good, good mind-you, dish of soup. Words of wisdom are these, to be pondered over by anyone who would make her evening dinner a joyful anticipation, a cherished memory. Magical, indeed, is the spell good soup can cast of its services as medicine or tonic why speak. Beef tea gives courage to battle with pain and suffering, consummate cheers the hours of convalescence. Let all honor be done to its virtues in the sick room, but with so cheerful a subject, its pleasant her to dwell on its more cheerful aspects. More legitimate is it to consider the happy part it plays in the Traveler's Program. And for this, it must be repeated as for all the best things in the Gormons life, one journeys to France. But first remember that contrast may add pungence to the French menu. The fair that awaits the weary, disconsolate traveler at English railway station, the Stodgy Bun, and the triangular sandwich, the tea drawn overnight. At a luncheon bar thus wickedly equipped, eating becomes what it should never be, a terrible necessity, a pleasurless safeguard against pangs of hunger, a mere animal function, and therefore a degradation to the human being educated to look upon food and drink, even so might the painter regard his colors,

the sculptor, his clay and marble, as means only to a perfect artistic end. For when everything is set and done, it is the soup which makes traveling so easy and

luxury. For when everything is said and done, it is the soup which makes traveling so easy and luxurious in France. A breakfast or a dinner of courses well cooked and well served into the bargain. You may eat at many a wayside station.

Wine. well served into the bargain. You may eat at many a wayside station. Wine, ordinary as its name perhaps, but still good and honest, is to be had for a paltry sum whenever the train may stop. This rolls light, preorioches tempt you to unwise excesses. Not a province, scarce a town, but has its own special dainty. Nugget, sausages, pate, and so you might go on mapping out the country according to, not its departments, but its dishes. These, however, the experienced traveler would gladly sacrifice for the delicate, strong, refreshing, in-spiriting, bouillin, served at every buffet. This it is which helps one to forget fatigue and dust and cinders and the odious Frenchman who will have all the windows shut. Boo-Yan and not wine gives one new heart to face the long night and the longer miles. With it the day's journey is well begun and well ended. It sustains and nourishes, and better still, it has its own aesthetic value. Perfect in itself, it is the one perfect dish for the place and purpose. No wonder then that it has kindled even Mr. Henry James into at least a show of enthusiasm. His bowls of bullion ever remain in the reader's memory, the most prominent pleasures of his little tour of France. Desirable in illness and in health during one's journey is abroad and one stays at home. Why is it then that soup has never yet been praised and glorified as it should? How is it that its greatness has inspired neither old nor epic?

That it... How is it that its greatness has inspired neither old nor epic, that it has been left to a parody, clever to be sure, but cleverness alone is not tribute sufficient, in a child's book to sing its perfections. It should be extoled and it has been vilified. Insults have been heaped upon it. In gratitude for man has been its portion. The soup, turine, is as poetic as the loving cup. Why should it suggest but the baldest prose to its most ardent worshippers? Thich or Clear whispers the restaurant waiter in your ear as he points to the soups on the bill of fare, thick or clear, there you have the two all-important divisions. In that simple phrase is expressed the whole science of soup making, face to face with first principles it brings you, but whether you elect for the one or the other, this great fundamental truth is there ever to be born in mind. Let fresh meat be the basis of your consummate as of your bisque and of your gumbo. Who would eat tinned pineapple when the fresh fruit is to be had? Would you give canned tomatoes preference when the happy palm d'amour just picked ornaments every stall in the market? Beef extract in skillful hands may work wonders. The soup made from it may deceive the connoisseur of great repute. But what then? Have you no conscience? No respect for your art that you would thus deceive. Ten soups also there be an infinite variety. Oxtail, mock turtle, and julian, and gravy and chicken broth, and many more than one likes to think of. But dire indeed must be your need before you have recourse to them. They too will answer in the hour of want. But at the best they prove but make shifts, but paltry make believes to be be avoided, even as you steer clear of the soup vegetables and herbs, bits of carrot and onion, and turn up, and who knows what, bottled ingeniously, pretty to the eye, without flavor to the palate.

One does not eat to please the sense of sight alone. When, heroically, you have foresworn the ensnaring tin and insinuating jar, the horizon widens before you. Nick were clear.

The phrase suggests, but narrow compass. Broad beyond measure is the sphere it really opens. A word first, as to its proper place on the menu. The conservative Britain might think this is subject upon which the last word long since had been spoken. If soup at all then must it appear between order and fish. Order a dinner in the American West and a procession of smiling, white roamed waiters swoop down upon you, bringing at once, indisheartening medley, your blue points, your gumbo, your tarot pen, and your apple pie. sacrilege in the pleasantest little restaurant in all Rome, close to the Piazza within sound of the Corso, was once to be seen any evening in the week. The grand consume is the basis of all soup and sauce making too. Among the ingredients of this consummate bouillon, there are directions large and lavish as would the economical housewife read with awe and something of terror. and and beef and fowl and rabbit and partridges of yesteryear. These be no more than the foundation. Throne into the marmite in fair and fitting proportions. Then must they be watched anxiously and intelligentlyently, as they boil. Spoonfuls of the common bullion should be poured upon them from time to time. There must be added carrots and onions, and celery and parsley, and whatever aromatic herbs may be handy, and oil if you have it. And after four hours of boiling slowly and demurly over a gentle fire, and next, straining through course, linen, you may really begin to prepare your soup. If to these heights alone, the ordinary man or woman may not soar, then will be the good, substantial, everyday bullion, or pot of food made of beef alone, but ever flavored with vegetables, fulfill the same purpose. Not so deliciously, but still fairly well. In households where soup is as it should be, a daily necessity, stock may be made and kept for convenience. But if you would have your pot of food in perfection, let the sauce, or marmite, the English word is commonplace, the French term charms. Be not of iron, but of earthenware, rich, tawny brown, or golden green in color, as you see it in many a French marketplace. If the least feeling for artistic fitness dwells within your soul, seven hours are needed for this. With good bullion, there's nothing the genius may not do. Intuit the French chef puts a few small slices of bread, and, as you eat, you wonder if tarapan or turtle ever tasted better. With the addition of neatly chopped carrots and onions and turnips and celery, you have julienne or with dainty asparagus tops, sweet fresh peas, tiny stinging radishes, delicate young onions. This last surely is the lyric among soups. Decide upon cheese instead for Michele macaroni. Each will prove a separate ecstasy. If you but remember the grated parmesan that must be sprinkled over it without stint as in Italy. Days there be when nothing seems so in keeping as rice, others, when cabbage hath charm, that is, if first in your simmering bullion, a piece of ham, whether of York, of Strasbourg, or of Virginia, be left for three hours or more. Again, to thicken the golden liquid with tapioca may seem of all devices the most adorable. And so may you ring the changes day after day, week after week, month after month. If of these lighter soups you tire, then turn with new hope and longing to the stimulating lists of purees and crems. Let tomatoes, or peas, beings or lentils as you will be the keynote. Always you may count upon a harmony in spiriting and divine. A rapture, tenfold greater if it be Enjoyed in favorite corner of your restaurant, where the masterpiece

awaits the chosen few. Or if, when London fogs are heavy and life proves burdensome, comfort is the very name of broth. Then put it to the test in its mutton, Scotch, chicken, or dozen or more varieties, and may it give you new courage to face the worst. But if, for pleasure solely you eat your soup, as you should, unless illness or the blue devils have you firm in their grasp, a few varieties there be, which to all the rest are even as is the rose to lesser flowers, as is the onion to vegetables of more prosaic virtue. Clams are a joy if you add to them but salt and pepper, cayenne by preference, and a dash of lemon juice. As a chowder, they are a substantial dream to linger over, but made into soup.

They reached... As a chowder, they are a substantial dream to linger over, but made into soup, they reach the very topmost bent of their being. It is the end for which they were created. A voiceters is as no less true. stock, or mud and broth may pass as prosaic basis of the delicacy, but better depend upon milk and cream, and of the latter be not sparing. Mace, indiscreet measure, lift flowing in the liquid will give the finishing the indispensable touch. Oh, the inexhaustible resources of the sea, with these delights rank best, that priceless puree made of crayfish, in this case, a pinch of all spice, instead of the mace. The incomparable onion. Too often, the poet sees but the tears that live in an onion. to the pious pious pious pious pious pious pious pious pious pious pious pious pious pious pious pious pious pious pious pious pious pious pious pious pious pious pious pious you subtle and tender. Rose among roots, its very name revives memories of pleasant feasting.

Its fragrance is rich for cast of delights to come. Without it, there would be no gastronomic

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