Stone Soup

The whole is greater than its parts

February 1, 2020 12:00 AM

“I dip my cup of soup back from the gurglin’, cracklin’, cauldron in some train yard,” John Hartford sings in his classic “Gentle on My Mind.”

The words don’t just call up the image of a man finding food on the hobo rails. They also tell about the comfort to be found when a community of friends or even strangers share in a communal pot and in the process create a ‘whole’ more satisfying than any of its parts.

One of the finest stories in folklore concerns a wandering minstrel who comes to a strange town with nothing but an empty belly, empty cauldron, and a clean and well-worn stone. He fills his pot with water at the town well, builds a tidy fire under it, and as a woman who has come there to get her water watches, he lovingly lays his stone inside it.

“What’s that?” she asks.

“Stone Soup,” he replies and begins to recount in mouth-watering detail the concoction he plans to dip up from the pot in only a few hours. “All it needs to make it just right is a couple of potatoes, and I just don’t have a one.”

Immediately the woman offers to bring him the necessary potatoes if he will share his soup with her later, and he, of course, agrees. And so it goes all through the day as the townspeople come and he tells this one he needs a few carrots, and that one a marrow bone, and yet another a bag of onions.

By evening, everyone in town has committed something from her or his larder to the pot, and the fragrances of the mingled foods dance in the air merrily, mixing with the sound of convivial voices.

The musician and burghers eat until they can’t take another bite more, noting how much finer this community stew is than any ever made at home alone. And then the minstrel pulls out his fiddle, someone else a mandolin, and yet another a banjo, and the whole town dances until nearly dawn.

When it’s over, the town goes to bed satisfied and the minstrel washes his pot, wraps up his stone, and heads down the road for the next meal of Stone Soup.

This recipe is not one for a specific dish, but is instead one for a fine experience. It works best on a chilly weekend.

Start with 6-8 cups of good homemade stock. Check your cupboards and refrigerator for further inspiration. Add onions and garlic. Look for a starch—potatoes, rice, barley, macaroni. Add bits of leftover meat or vegetables. How about a can of beans? Think of what else would be good, then start calling friends and see who can come and bring what. When you’ve got about half a dozen assembled, put everyone’s ingredient in the pot, turn it down to simmer, and settle down for an hour or more of playing cards, telling tales, or picking some homemade music.

When the soup in the pot starts to smell so good you can’t stand it, make a big skillet of Real Cornbread, pull out some jars of pickles, or slice some apples. Grate cheese, chop green onions, spoon out some sour cream, and open a bottle of Tabasco so it can be added to the soup as your guests wish. Fill everyone's bowl and settle in to savor the experience of real Stone Soup. Seconds are available.

Dolly’s Stone Soup

Stone Soup wasn’t just a story for Dolly Parton.

Parton’s recollections of her childhood in East Tennessee weave memories of her parents’ tenderness and ingenuity with the facts of the family’s stark poverty. When Dr. Robert F. Thomas (after whom she named a song) delivered her in a log cabin outside Sevierville in January 1946, her father, Lee, had no money and paid the doctor with a sack of cornmeal—ground from grain he’d raised himself.

And when Dolly’s mother—Avie Lee—found only vegetables in the larder to feed her large family, Stone Soup was the way she turned a humble stew into an exciting dinner.

In her book, Dolly (Reid Books, 1978) country music writer and Parton biographer Alanna Nash says that Avie would often ceremoniously add a freshly scrubbed rock to her potatoes, onions, and tomatoes, bringing excitement to an ordinary meal.

And the imaginative Dolly liked the Stone Soup her mother made so much that when she first appeared on Mike Douglas’ show in 1977, she demonstrated how to make it on television.

Real Cornbread

What you want is cornbread that pops out of a cast-iron skillet flat and browned, steam rising from the gash when you cut it to serve. Real cornbread is sunny tasting and golden crispy, thin with a high ratio of crust to center—that’s why cornsticks are so prized among mountain people. It tastes of drippings (bacon grease or butter are the best) and corn. It’s about the most American food I know of, and sometimes you can even get it made right in a restaurant. On the other hand, you can get it just perfect at home if you follow this recipe for Real Cornbread, just like my mother made it all my life.

Yields 6 wedges of cornbread from the pan, or a dozen cornsticks

You Will Need

4 tablespoons drippings
2 cups finely ground white cornmeal
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 large egg
1 1/2 cups milk or buttermilk

To Prepare

The secret to great cornbread is the crust, and the trick to making the crust just right is to heat the pan and drippings good and hot in your oven before you put the cornbread batter in it. So before you so much as get out a bowl to mix up the batter, turn the oven to 450 degrees.

In a 9-inch, round cast-iron skillet (or reasonable facsimile thereof), put about 4 tablespoons of drippings. Bacon grease is the traditional choice and gives cornbread a distinctive flavor. Butter is tasty and about a tablespoon of butter along with a bland vegetable oil will still give a good taste with less saturated fat to feel guilty about.

Pop the skillet, grease and all into the oven. Please note, you can’t accomplish what you want by heating the skilled on a burner on top of the stove. Doing that will make hot spots in the bottom of your skillet which in turn will make your cornbread stick to the pan.

While the grease is getting good and hot in the oven, mix cornmeal, salt, soda, and baking powder in a big bowl. Add the egg and milk or buttermilk, and stir until just blended.

Remove the skillet from the oven and very, very carefully (don’t burn your hand!) swirl the grease around in the skillet so it coats the bottom and the lower half of the sides.

Now pour the hot grease into the cornmeal mix and if everything is perfect it will snap, crackle, pop and bubble invitingly. (Even if it doesn’t, there’s no problem. It just means your grease wasn’t quite hot enough and you should leave it a smidgen longer next time. But don’t leave it too long and start a fire.)

Mix lightly until the grease is just blended in, then pour the cornbread batter into the hot skillet and put it back in the oven for 20-25 minutes until the bread is firm in the middle. If the crust isn’t browned on top, pop the pan under the broiler for just a few seconds to get it crispy golden. Serve from the skillet, or turn the skillet upside down on a big plate and the cornbread should slip right out.

If you want to make cornsticks, use the same recipe, but pour the batter into greased cornstick pans and bake for half the time.